Part 2: The changing affiliate landscape
The long arm of the law
Whether affiliates will be able to avoid the regulatory
embrace in any given jurisdiction is a matter of some
debate. To be clear, affiliates have a choice of whether
to take heed or ignore what is being said by regulators
in any given jurisdiction; as Garner puts it, the long
arm of any government is unlikely to stretch to every
bedroom affiliate.
Yet arguably any jurisdiction intent on policing its
gambling sector doesn’t need to resort to finding
every affiliate working in every nook and cranny; as
has been shown in the UK, it ‘merely’ has to pressure
the operators working within the market with regard
to all their marketing activities.
Putting operators on notice effectively does
the same for the affiliates. In this way, a regulator
potentially achieves control of the affiliate sector
working within its jurisdiction at arm’s length and at
relatively little extra cost.
“It stands to reason that if operators are increasingly
under the spotlight of the relevant regulators to
ensure that their marketing activities are conducted
properly, affiliates will need to up their game too,” says
MacDonald from Wiggin.
“In many jurisdictions, an operator cannot simply
claim that the marketing of their products and
services was produced by an affiliate as a way to
relieve them from their compliance obligations (and
rightly so).”
It means that affiliates will need to ensure that are
producing marketing that complies with all the relevant
is the appearance on affiliate
websites,” he says. “It is fairly hard
to display a good amount of T&Cs
on a mobile screen without it
looking pretty ugly.
Some affiliates will find this
tougher than others, it all depends
on their backend features and
functionality. Affiliates who are
using Wordpress for example
will likely have a tougher time
compared to those who have a
proprietary backend.”
rules. “Whilst this may mean that the more non-
compliant affiliates find themselves out of work, this is
a huge opportunity for those affiliates who understand
the regulations to gain the trust of the operators and
dominate the sector,” MacDonald concludes.
Wellard at iGamingXL says that while some affiliates
will choose to work with unregulated brands, “for the
most part, affiliates want to stay within the regulations”.
“This gives them possible two routes. First, find the
operators who are fully licensed within the market and
already have their traffic, and promote only those. Or,
second, look to emerging markets where opportunity is
not so fierce. There are pros and cons for both and it’s
possible that affiliates will choose both options initially.”
(The options with regard to emerging markets are
discussed in the final section of this report.)
For Sims, the issue comes down to one of trust,
between operators and affiliates as much as between
the players and the merchants. “Affiliates have to show
they are trustworthy and engaged with doing things
in the right way,” he says. “If you are hoping someone
will tell you where you are going wrong, you are on the
slow road to ruin.”
Craig Van Flute, chief marketing officer at Argyll
Entertainment, points out that the vast majority
of affiliate partners for any operator are now “big
businesses” and they themselves ensure they are up
to date with compliance requirements. “They all know
they are risking their lucrative working relationships
with operators by failing in this area,” he says.
Around 5-10% of the sites
we see month-on-month
are either changing
dramatically
or disappearing
Ian Sims, Rightlander
Under pressure: Regulation and the evolution of affiliate marketing
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