Good Game - Poker Affiliates at Risk?

Poker affiliation has been a nice little business during the past fifteen years or so, with the industry booming and growing all over the place and new players taking up online poker as a hobby or trying to turn pro. Many of these players made their first steps into the world of online poker through one of truly numerous affiliate sites out there, reaping additional benefits for themselves, but also increasing the said sites bottom line.

During recent years, however, things started to change and certain developments indicate that poker affiliates could be at risk of losing their ground, at least to some extent. It isn't only that popularity of poker has decreased significantly compared to the boom years, but also the fact that many rooms are changing their affiliate programs or cutting affiliates all together.

Amaya's game

Purchase of Full Tilt and PokerStars by the Amaya Group is old news and nobody expected that things would remain unchanged, but there is no denying that there were some quite radical moves made under the new ownership.

With regards to the affiliates, first came Full Tilt announcement, simply cutting all affiliate agreements. While this produced many unhappy (former) partners, there wasn't much anyone could do - after all, the agreements between affiliates and poker sites are hardly iron-clad stuff that someone could take to court.

Then, a few months back, PokerStars announced that all old affiliates will no longer receive their cut of revenue. This news was really received with very vocal displeasure of many major affiliate sites that have probably sent thousands of players to PokerStars over the years and this decision must have had a huge impact on their bottom line.

Poker giant did not cut the affiliate program all together though, and affiliates bringing in new players will still receive revenue from these players for the duration of two years, after which the affiliation expires.

Expansion of Unibet

Just recently, Unibet has acquired one of the largest poker and sports betting operators in the UK, Stan James. While nothing is set in stone, the fact is that Unibet had no problem cutting out all affiliates when they acquired Bet24 back in 2012. Players were migrated but they were not tagged back to their affiliates, meaning that many big affiliates lost dozens, even hundreds of players in the transition.

Will similar thing happen with Stan James? No one can predict future, of course, but if past is any indicator, it wouldn't come as a shock if the affiliation was "lost in translation". As one of the flagship rooms on Microgaming Network, Stan James is home to number of players, some of them of really high value, so it would, no doubt, be a big blow for the industry.

iPoker conundrum

Anyone who's been around poker industry for a while, even without being an affiliate themselves, knows that iPoker network represented one of the biggest places for the affiliates for a long time. Despite of the fact that officially there has been no rakeback offers across iPoker, the "under the table" deals are probably one of the best known "secrets" out there.

However, over the years, different rooms in iPoker Network have, in a way, cornered themselves by competing to offer the best deals to the affiliates and bring players on their skins. After a while, it reached the point where it no longer made sense, which lead to recent changes in rake calculations, hitting players and affiliates alike.

Does industry even need affiliates?

Often when this topic is brought up, there are people saying things along the lines that affiliates don't really do anything for poker and that with them out of the picture, it would be a brave, new world out there, with no one dipping into the players' rewards.

While this notion certainly has some merits, one important thing to consider is that the online poker industry was built around the affiliates. It did not have to happen that way and perhaps it wasn't the best way to go about it, but none of that can change the past.

If online sites wanted to do all of their marketing on their own, they could have; but they've decided it was simpler to leave it out for the community to take care of itself. With that in mind, different poker strategy and news sites started popping up, all basing their operations on affiliate programs.

If these programs were to disappear, there would be very little incentive to keep maintaining these sites. Regardless of what anyone may personally feel of think, this would simply lower the exposure the online poker is getting on the global level, leading to fewer players taking an interest in the game and registering to play.

Perhaps the rooms themselves can take over the initiative and start marketing on their own, as some are trying already, but they will have some catching up to do should they go down that path. After all, affiliates have been in this game for over a decade and have pretty much figured out what works the best. There will be a lot of ground to cover should affiliates be forced to make an exit.

There is still no reason to panic however. The proverbial straw hasn't broken the camel's back just yet and there is no doubt that, much like the rest of the industry, affiliates will go with the flow and do their best to adjust to new conditions and keep at it. Who can really say what will online poker in general look like in five years, with so much going on at the moment?