The importance of the affiliates market to internet gambling is illustrated by the numbers. As much as 80 per cent of the business generated by permitting an online gambling company to be directly accessed via your website – and even for the entire 'lifetime' of the gambler, is powerful stuff.
It is a ‘multi-billion dollar’ sector within online gambling – no-one is able to pin the numbers down any more precisely than that. The lurid offers to visiting potential affiliates to the Barcelona Affiliate Conference (September 9-10) to open their sites to direct links to gambling locations, proves the point. How many uncommitted affiliates were actually in the hall is an unknown factor, but likely to be small. However, most of the operating companies exhibiting said that they welcomed the opportunity to talk with their current hosts, update deals, renew arrangements, or steal sites from one-another at the end of contracts, was the real business being conducted.
Some of the big names in online gambling had stands at the show, William Hill through Affiliates United, 888, Bet 365, Bwin, Paddy Power, PafPartners, PartyGaming were among a total of 49 exhibitors. Two simultaneous conference programmes were run covering areas including market analysis, emailing, binary options, pre-paid payment methods, regulatory updates and the potential of mobile phones. The latter was perhaps the theme of the show.
The entire exercise had a relaxed atmosphere but there was an undercurrent of an almost frantic scramble to seize on anyone uncommitted. Lee Hills from Isle of Man corporate trust organisation ILS Fiduciaries, commented: “The whole affiliates business is quite outrageous. You have a couple of guys in a room somewhere and a website they constantly refresh operating an affiliates business. You can see the percentage offers dotted around the room, 30 per cent, 40 per cent, 50 per cent; it is the supermarket principle of stack ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap and it’s a multi-billion dollar business. But there comes a point where it is too expensive to use affiliates. It is all a question of balance.”
Hills added: “This sector is not like the rest of the industry with its suppliers and operators. This is a separate business with its own structure and within that, constant movement, mergers, acquisitions, changes from one affiliates destination to another.”
Shane Murphy, egaming affiliate manager at Paddy Power, said: “We are here because we have existing clients and want to have meetings with them. There can be many reasons for having a stand here, but eventually it is all about increasing the number of players that someone can send us.”
The importance of internet gambling to the Irish bookmaker is illustrated by its June 2011 half-year results, a €56m profit and 81 per cent of it coming from the internet and mobile phones business. “We are predominantly in the UK and Ireland, but we accept players from most European countries; we are now in Australia with Sportsbet and we now have a partnership with a French bookmaking company.”
Bingo products, said Murphy, are now one of the best and most ‘fun and social’ aspects of online gambling. “Thirty per cent of bingo players online now meet up in the real world by creating a profile and chatting; poker is the same. Mobile phones provide the latest trends and other significant new areas include live casino games where you can have a real dealer.”
This ‘conference call’ live roulette game was at the show on the booth of Smart Live Gaming. Affiliate manager Jamie Toulson demonstrated the ability to join a constantly evolving live game in a London studio, using a real croupier and table. “This can appear on the affiliate’s website and the player can simply click into it to take part. We have applied to take the game live into Italy and Spain too. Many people dislike the use of random number generators and simulated tables, because they simply don’t trust them. This is a traditional American roulette game taking place live.”
The appeal of the game, said Toulson, would be multiplied once the US market comes on-stream, which he was confident would happen next year. “The US Government is under great pressure because of the dollar revenues which they are missing.”
But that was only one of a welter of product on display at the exhibition, admittedly most of which had been seen before. But this was not a business-to-business exhibition for suppliers and their products, it was very much one for operators to access their hosting mechanisms. The ability of the affiliates to recognise what they have in their grasp was accented by the conference programme, which ran alongside the exhibition.
According to the exhibitors, the affiliates display a wildly differing degree of knowledge of the true potential of their sites. Some view the business as an unexpected but welcome ‘something for nothing’ while the more savvy recognise a gift to be nurtured and do so with considerably enthusiasm and not a little expertise.
How many affiliates were actually there is open to speculation. Certainly several hundred and at nearly £600 a pop to get in, it can be readily understood why there weren’t thousands present. Those who were, devoted much time to spreading their time between the largesse on offer – before heading for the beaches.
