FEATURE
certainly be interesting to see how it
develops as it is going to involve
big workload challenges for affiliates,
especially in relation to making sure
that any bonuses they advertise have
got the right terms and are up to date
when those terms change. It’s no
longer going to be possible for affiliates
to ignore emails from affiliate
programmes about changes to terms
and conditions. These are going to have
to be acknowledged, recognised and
acted on quickly.
Do you think that, if this is
going to have a huge impact
on affiliates’ workload, it could
drive even further consolidation
in the affiliate space?
Absolutely. In the last three years
certain affiliate networks have just
dominated the market and I think it is
highly likely that smaller affiliates are
going to struggle in the UK market.
Whether the bigger affiliates are going
to do any better, that remains to be seen.
If you have hundreds of sites and you are
advertising an operator on all of them,
that’s hundreds of sites you have to
change every time a bonus term changes,
so the workload implications are for
them a lot higher. But these affiliates
networks generally have far larger
resource pools.
Does this worry you as an affiliate
of your size?
Yes. It absolutely does, without question.
Our primary concern is in the management
of complaints and that keeps us far
more accurate on bonus terms than
most affiliates, but far more accurate at
the present time in my opinion isn’t going
to be enough. Entirely accurate is what
you will have to get to, and so we are
having to take steps to improve the systems
we have in place to cope with this.
How do you think the General
Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) will affect the industry?
The GDPR significantly increases the
restrictions that all businesses will face
when dealing with personal data. Online
gambling operators are going to have to
be a lot more careful regarding providing
players with explicit definition of who they
are sharing information with and why,
especially if they are relying on consent
to do so. It will no longer be sufficient to
say that they are sharing data with “3rd
party marketing companies”: the specific
companies and the reason for sharing the
data will have to be clearly laid out. Users
will also have to be provided with a clear
opt-out, which is as easy to use as the
opt-in, allowing them to revoke permission
to share their data. This will become
even more of an issue where company
structuring involves different companies
under the same ownership performing
different roles with the information
gathered by the gambling operator.
Even though there is shared ownership,
explicit detail will still have to be provided
to share information.
There’s a lot that will only really become
clear after the GDPR comes into effect
on 25 May, 2018 but with fines for breach
of such a significant nature (up to 4% of
annual turnover or €20 million, whichever’s
higher) any operator not acting now on this
to ensure compliance is taking a significant
risk. We’ve already compiled and submitted
a lengthy document to the ICO asking
for clarification of various aspects of the
GDPR guidance they’ve put out and made
significant changes to our own privacy
policies to try to get ahead of this one.
Have you been affected by the
shutdown of the casino and poker
markets in Australia?
We certainly had some traffic in Australia
and we still have some traffic in Australia.
It is one of our top 10 sourc