FEATURE
The upper tier members would share
the cost of this action equally. And by
pooling the cost of legal action we allow
this strategy to become accessible to all
the members and create another more
significant disincentive to operators that
are not willing to respect the nature of the
affiliate relationship.
Previous attempts to instigate
collective action among
affiliates on these issues failed
to gain traction. Why will this
be any different?
There have been many attempts to put
together an affiliate union over the years,
and in my opinion they fail because they
try to dictate who affiliates can work with.
Affiliates have vastly differing opinions
on what makes a good partner program.
If the collective starts drawing lines around
which programs members cannot work
with, any affiliate who has a significant
investment with a ‘ruled out’ program
can’t take part.
To address this issue we looked to take
a totally different approach. The structure
we’ve put together will not place any
restrictions on members in terms of which
programs they can work with. And it will
operate via a democratic voting system,
with every member having an equal say.
Furthermore, only supporting members will
be asked to engage in publications.
What are the challenges with
uniting a global affiliate industry
and how do you in tend to
overcome them?
There is a difference between uniting a
global affiliate industry and what this
project looks to achieve.
One of the challenges we face is the
nature of affiliates, which consist of
a diverse group of people with a wide
ThePOGG.com
Established: 2011
Key people: Duncan Garvie, manager
Based: Scotland and Malta
Employees: Seven
spectrum of views and opinions. This is
not an attempt to unify all of them. But
we are looking to gather together enough
affiliates of a similar viewpoint who are
willing to work together to improve the
rights of all members.
Ideally I would envision an active
membership of 50-100 affiliates. In my
opinion, were we to go beyond this
bracket, administration and maintaining
active participation would be difficult.
Less than this figure and the effectiveness
of any actions we could take would start
to diminish.
Sky Bet’s T&Cs allowed it
to shut its program down
with zero notice, and most
programs that affiliates have
signed up with reserve the
right to make similar changes.
How does your group intend
to deal with this?
I’m wary of commenting on an
individual issue as the whole premise
behind this project would be the view
of the collective decides what action is
taken, not the views of myself or any
other individual.
“Past attempts to put together an affiliate union have failed
because they tried to dictate who affiliates can work with”
One of the most important strategies
to making a success of this project is
straightforward and addressed by this
interview – we need to get the idea out
to affiliates.
With thousands of affiliates currently
active in the industry it should not be
difficult to find 50-100 who believe that
this project is a good idea. But the biggest
obstacle to overcome here is getting the
word out.
So I’d like to take this opportunity to
reach out and encourage any affiliate
who is interested to tell your friends.
Word of mouth will decide whether or
not this project is successful!
I think the Sky Bet closure was an
example of a program using unrelated
regulatory changes to dip its hands into its
partners’ pockets.
This shouldn’t have come as a surprise
to anyone. This operator had a history
of taking this type of action and had
changed its revenue ladder only a couple
of years ago to pay its affiliates less.
It slashed affiliate incomes and got
away with it. Why wouldn’t it just stop
paying affiliates altogether?
The biggest strength affiliates have
is their traffic. Operators want their
brand exposed to that traffic. But this
can work in reverse too. The last thing
iGB Affiliate Issue 68 APR/MAY 2018
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