How much will closure of SKY's AffiliateHub affiliate program hurt your business?

[MichaelCorfman]

AffiliateHub put predatory affiliate terms in place nearly two years ago on 1 November 2015 as discussed in the following thread where commissions were reduced to 5% unless six or more new first-time depositors were referred each month:

Skybet changes terms to steal from affiliates

Now they have angered the affiliate community even more by deciding to shut the program down completely, stealing all future revenue from players previously referred by affiliates as discussed in the following thread:

Sky Bet?!

From this thread it is clear that many affiliates will be hurt very badly by this closure:

Mid 6 figures a year hit for me. Looks like imma out of work now.

Yep it's around 35-40% of mine and I have no intention of rolling over and letting this go quietly

First post on here, I will likely lose about 70-80K a year from this and about 20% of my total revenue.

my biggest earner

I'm gutted to be honest because even with them robbing 80% from me they were my top affiliate revenue.

But many affiliates had little or no exposure, in some cases because after the changes a couple years ago a number of affiliates decided not to work with them:

Luckily we don't earn huge amounts from them.

Sorry to hear that it was a bigger deal for some of you lads. I assumed, as I did so crap with them, that it couldn't be such a big deal for others.

Going off 2017 revenue, Skybet was 0.0014% of my revenue.

I stopped promoting them when they brought in the ridiculous quotas.

I was one of the small affiliates left with no chance when they introduced their quotas so luckily never sent them much traffic.

We dropped SkyBet a couple of years ago when they implemented quotas to steal from small affiliates.

As discussed in the referenced thread, many affiliates are consulting attorneys, and there is good reason to think that the extreme action SKY has taken will come back to haunt them. At least I personally very much hope that is the case.

For today's poll I'd like to get a sense of how severe the effect of the closure will be for affiliates. On the one hand, I hope that most affiliates are not hurt significantly. On the other hand, I hope the effect is significant enough that there is a backlash that will make a difference and teach affiliate programs that if they go too far, it will hurt them.

Michael

[PROFRBcom]

On the other hand, I hope the effect is significant enough that there is a backlash that will make a difference and teach affiliate programs that if they go too far, it will hurt them.

Carbon Poker, ChipSplit, and Jazette **** canned all their affiliates and got away with it scott free a couple years ago. Good luck guys.

[Madz]

It has hit me pretty bad. A 3rd of my earnings have been stolen from me by Sky. Its blatant theft.

[PhilF (ex-WhichBingo)]

Big client for us but we have literally hundreds of brands we work with so it's a PITA but nowhere near life threatening.

[celena]

I do not work with these people!

[TinShed]

Its been a big hit for me, I made most of my affiliate revenue from them. I've been promoting their super6 for a few years on a number of football related twitter accounts and last month was my biggest payment at just over 1k, and that was on 5%.

[-Shay-]

With sky, we took almost no hit at all. Back in 2015, we had a "custom deal" with them, which we took the position that quotas and newly introduced terms did not apply to the deal we had in place with them (they agreed although probably did so reluctantly).

However, the concern we had was that either they were going to close down or they were going to move to either terminate or modify our custom deal in the future. As such, we reduced our exposure to them drastically. As such, we're earned very little with them since the end of 2015.

Fortunately for us, we took the smoke to mean there was probably a fire and we diversified away from them based on how they were acting as well as treating other affiliates.

[susba]

For me the conclusion is that you have to work with many affiliate programs so that you are not totally depended on 1-2.

[Sherlock]

I started to give them higher exposure in UK during last months, because they were the only UK sports brand that converted (if i do not count bet365 which are now even more shining #1).

The loss hurts, it is not life threatening, but I am much more concerned about the loss of whole UK market. It will hurt much more.

[eenzoo]

No UK, no sports betting, no Sky problems ...

[sweetbet]

I briefly promoted their brands a few years ago but didn't do well with them so I removed their listings shortly afterwards.

[TheGooner]

Zero impact. We dropped Sky when they picked on small affiliates with a 5 signups per month quota in 2015.

Inactivity can be measured via banner impressions and clicks - so this was completely predatory - and a sign of poor business ethics.
We only want to work with the best - SkyBet clearly weren't - and our residuals there were not that great.

It was an easy decision to make really and our replacement programs were better earners.

--------------------

As for this current situation - I actually find it less of an issue.
Businesses can change - they can modify aspects - and closing an affiliate program is a legitimate move.

Of course an ethical business that is continuing it's main operation would honour any termination clauses.
If the contracts do say revenue share for the lifetime of the customer - then there are residual payments to continue.

Do they? I don't have any Skybet documentation to check.

[good4bonus]

Good that i never worked with them
and each time i start to think that we, affiliates, must have 10X more attention to the terms before join any new aff program, give less or 0 exposure to those that change terms and keep the only "few" ones that are still good for us

[Betivity]

Great thread and poll. That sucks for affiliates who are affected by this. I wish there was more we could do

[BBCasinos]

Never worked with them. So in my case a lucky thing.
But What about uk? I hear more rumours brands and networks pulling out of This market.
Could This be the next shock after NL and Aus?

''UK Market Closure
Due to ongoing complications surrounding marketing practices and compliance within the UK market, we have decided to close all UK campaigns for the time being. All revshares will continue to be paid as normal on old players.''

[Progger]

0 and nothing.

I read some negative feedbacks here and avoid this brand...

[Cash Bonus]

Hello,


I also have never done any sort of work with these people.

[MJM]

Almost zero exposure post 2015 thankfully.

[BestBonusBets]

Zero

[TheGamblersClub]

No impact on me, never work with them but I feel for those who were earning good money with them.