Eurobet Terms Predatory ?

[aleks]

Hi,

I have spotted some strange terms in Eurobet affiliate program TOS. What do you think?

4.7 Minimum Referral Requirements. All Affiliates are required to refer a minimum of 5 Players within the first 12 weeks of joining the Affiliate Programme. Should an Affiliate not reach this requirement your participation in the Affiliate Programme may be terminated, but you will have the option to re-apply.

5.4 Automatic Termination without notice. This Agreement may be automatically terminated without notice where:
5.4.1. The total cumulative balance of Referral Commissions due to you is less than £25 for three (3) consecutive 4-week periods; or
5.4.2. You do not refer any persons qualifying as Players in any three (3) consecutive 4-week periods;

[aleks]

Also, I have found this:

3.2.2.19 purchase or register keywords, search terms or other identifiers for use in any search engine, portal, sponsored advertising service or other search or referral service without our direct authorisation and strict adherence to our Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) policy, (available on request), likewise you may not use Our Marks in HTML coding (including but not limited to ‘meta tags’, ‘meta descriptions’, ‘meta content’, ‘page titles’ and ‘titles’).

For example: According to this every website with Eurobet review is breaking their TOS. wtf?

[RBS]

The minimum + termination rules sucks if you ask me !

Regarding the meta tags etc. I have seen this a few times before, but i am not sure if any room actually enforce such rules. But yes, to me it sounds like you are not allowed to make a review or even to mention them, lol whatever

[davenewgates]

First, their automatic termination is very unpleasant. We must be notified if we violate rules and decide that they do termination. The automatic refferal requirement is a bit too high. Eurobet must review again their terms.

[bonustreak]

The min player rule is enough to make them listed predatory but the marketing rules are very common with many affiliate programs. I will try to read all the terms in the morning and get the team at AGD voting on them asap.

[Richard (OLBG)]

Yes, i particularly dont like the 5 players in first 12 weeks rule. I am not sure how it helps them.

I'm sure many affiliates join a program, test it out and dont really push it for a while. Also what if someone is starting up and wants to list Eurobet from day one.. they may not hit 5 players in 12 weeks but in 6 months they may start flooding in!

The min commission over 12 weeks also for a sportsbook. Its very easy to refer lots of players and have negative earnings early on in sports, especially during periods where results arent favourable. Sportsbook takes long term active players to really generate your income. There have been programs where we have sent hundreds of players inthe first 3 months but not earned positive rev share earnings... but later on those players have earned very nice rev shares.

I can see what they are trying to do... but dont think these terms will achieve it.

[earnbet82]

4.7 Minimum Referral Requirements. All Affiliates are required to refer a minimum of 5 Players within the first 12 weeks of joining the Affiliate Programme. Should an Affiliate not reach this requirement your participation in the Affiliate Programme may be terminated, but you will have the option to re-apply.

well that sucks. Last time i logged into my affiliate account with eurobet there was no report I could run to even see how many players I had referred so far. I am the 1st to admit I don't get many new player signups but the ones I do get seem to have a high percentage of been active. For guys like me this means eurobet can jst close my account whenever they want.

Its just not right!! I have already had 888sport (ufiliates) suspend my account because it went into a big negative balance last month

[NickyV]

this is what heppened to me last year.

true, as i didn't brought any new players..

From: Affiliates [mailto: Affiliates@xxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, 01. July 2010 17:20
To: 'xxxxxxx'
Subject: PLEASE READ - IMPORTANT ACCOUNT INFORMATION

Dear xxxxx,

We would like to advise you that after careful consideration your account has been partly suspended and any potential commissions earned in Period 10 (07/06/2010 ¿ 04/07/2010) will be withheld for the following breaches of our Terms and Conditions:

* You have referred no new depositing players since the start our company's financial year (28/09/2009), and
* You have not reached the minimum commissions threshold amount for at least two consecutive calendar months.

According to our Terms and Conditions, paragraph 5.4, we have the right to suspend an affiliate account when:

* The total cumulative balance of Affiliate Fees due to you is less than £25 for three (3) consecutive calendar months; or
* You do not have any persons qualifying as Players in any sixty (60) day period.

However we will consider re-activating fully your account. For this to happen we will need you to provide us with your plan for how you will be able to maintain the account in accordance with the Terms and Conditions you agreed to upon registering your account:

* Drive new depositing customers to Eurobet.com, and
* Earn regular commissions.

Please note that you can still log in to your account and check your stats.

We look forward to hearing from you with your plan.

Kind Regards,

i replied to this:

Hello xxxxx,

please feel free and remove my affiliate account as i will remove eurobet from my site.

Thank you in advance and wish you a nice day.

got an answer

Hi xxxx,

Thank you for your prompt response.

Further to your message your account is now closed.

Have a good weekend.

Kind Regards,

Eurobet Affiliates Team

[dublinbetPaul]

Yes, i particularly dont like the 5 players in first 12 weeks rule. I am not sure how it helps them.

We had a similar issue at Dublinbet where we introduced a similar clause. The reason being that we had several affiliates sign-up in order to abuse the program. They'd be the only sign-up to play our casino. If they lost they took 30% back in affiliate commission. If they won, well they won. So we tried to prevent this by making sure that each affiliate must sign up a minimum number.

However after some good feedback from affiliates here at GPWA we could see that this wasn't going to work for affiliates, especially smaller ones or in fact for us. So we removed it completely and can deal with such abusers under separate clauses in our T&Cs.

I'm not justifying it's inclusion in Eurobet's T&Cs, just trying to shed some light on why this clause might have been inserted from our own experience.