FEATURE
Q&A: DUNCAN GARVIE,
THEPOGG
Earlier this year ThePOGG passed a big milestone after the amount returned to players via its
complaints system passed the $1m mark. Manager Duncan Garvie talks to Joanne Christie about
setting up the site with the goal of going into bat for players, and also gives his view of the challenges
facing the UK affiliate market
iGaming Business: How did you
get involved in the affiliate space?
Duncan Garvie: I started off as a player,
primarily offline, but after making a
reasonable amount of money doing that
I wanted an activity that didn’t require so
much travelling — but I still wanted to be
involved in gambling. At that point,
I decided to set up a site to help gamblers
find quality sites to play with, ones that
were more likely to treat them fairly and
less likely to have complaints against them.
Is this why you decided on the
slightly unusual model of offering
a mediation service?
Personally, I wouldn’t be comfortable
working within the market if we were
sending players to operators that weren’t
trustworthy, so it has always been our core
focus to send players only to operators
we feel are the very best in the market.
I felt we needed a third party to stand up
for players. The way we decided to make
sure that our operators were the best and
were treating players fairly was to run the
complaints service, so if a player came to
us and said, “I’ve been treated unfairly”,
we had a voice with the operator.
Not every operator responded positively
to that, a lot of them don’t want to
engage with third parties or do so
reluctantly at best, but that’s what weeds
the bad operators out and what you are
left with is operators which are very
player-focused and willing to listen when
complaints come in. It has been very
successful — only a few months ago
we passed the milestone of more than
$1 million returned to players and since
that point we’ve returned almost a quarter
of a million more. And we have a far
closer relationship with those partners we
work with than I think most affiliates do
with the partners they work with.
But how do you monetise this
complaints provision?
I’m reluctant to focus too heavily on
monetising something of this nature.
We do have a banner on our complaints
page advertising some of our operators.
That is in the process of a redesign
and whether that remains or not I don’t
“I feel that the complaints monetise themselves as what
you end up with is a core group of engaged gamers
who regularly return to the site”
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iGB Affiliate Issue 66 DEC 2017/JAN 2018
know now. I feel that the complaints
monetise themselves as what you end up
with is a core group of engaged gamers
who regularly return to the site. Quite often
these are people we’ve helped and they are
active gamers — that’s the type of traffic
every affiliate wants on their site.
What are the bulk of complaints
you receive about?
Mostly, they are bonus terms. You’ve
also got a lot that are payment related,
especially in markets outside the UK.
The unlicensed US market is really bad
for slow payments. Another rapidly rising
area of complaints is responsible gaming.
Players are becoming better educated as
to what their rights are and what operators
should be doing to protect vulnerable
gamblers and vulnerable players.
How do you balance your
advocacy approach with
maintaining good relationships
with operators?
Our rating system has always built in
compliance with complaints. The operators
at the top of our rankings all have a long
history of being transparent and willing to
discuss complaints, and in most situations
nobody walks away with hard feelings
after a complaint. Even when the operator