Grand National - Who's withdrawing welcome bonuses?

[casinog]

Then it's not worth the effort to promote them for Grandnational day unless its on CPA

[FictionNet]

They think the players are once a year punters with little or no value once the Grand National has been run.

This surprises me alot. I'd have thought it was a goldmine for bookies, raking in thousands of new customers who could then be converted to other products. I guess this reminds me how little I know about the sports sector.

[JackTenSuited]

This surprises me alot. I'd have thought it was a goldmine for bookies, raking in thousands of new customers who could then be converted to other products. I guess this reminds me how little I know about the sports sector.

Yep, I would have thought that too, but it's pretty popular in the UK for people to have a punt on the grand national and nothing else, I see it all the time with my non gambling friends on facebook who just want to put a fiver on the race because it's a special event and they have no interested in gambling for the next year.

Betfair just emailed me, they will be running a signup bonus on Saturday for the race

[MattPrice]

We (Sky Bet) aren't offering a free bet for the Saturday. I dropped an email around last week about it but if anyone didn't get one, feel free to let me know and I can make sure you're actually on our lists.

As has been mentioned, the Grand National traditionally brings in low quality punters -often the free bet costs are more than the margin you expect to take from them...so, I can understand operators not being to keen to attract new custom.

I also know it's a massive pain, so if you see me at an affiliate conference you can have a beer to say sorry on me

[RacingJim]

Interesting thread and valuable information as ever. One of the reasons I like GPWA.

[baldidiot]

Coral have emailed - they're offering bet £5 get £5 on Sat.

[golfbettingsystem]

Totesport removing the free bet on Saturday:

As the Grand National approaches, Totesport are sticking with industry standards by placing affiliates on 30% revenue share and removing the free bet to ensure player quality.

Totesport are also launching a new desktop site at the end of April, meaning that the free bet will not be available (on desktop only) from the 10th April onwards.

[RacingJim]

Had a couple of emails today saying bonus will be removed on the day and sort of half-threatening tone saying remove all mention of it on your site. These affiliate managers haven't got a clue. Change my whole site for a day? No Chance, I'll put a nice little note on the offer saying not available on Grand national day, I'm not removing whole pages of content and mentions of offers, are these guys crazy?

[MattPrice]

Had a couple of emails today saying bonus will be removed on the day and sort of half-threatening tone saying remove all mention of it on your site. These affiliate managers haven't got a clue. Change my whole site for a day? No Chance, I'll put a nice little note on the offer saying not available on Grand national day, I'm not removing whole pages of content and mentions of offers, are these guys crazy?

For me, I know these kind of requests are pretty unlikely to be fulfilled completely. But, we do need to ask all the same to ensure there's one coherent message from the programme and our business. After all, for every affiliate with a wide network full of content, there also one with a single page ppc site or Twitter account who could make a quick change/adjust their messaging on the day. Either way, I'm not sure there's any point in us making a huge issue as it's unlikely to help our cause...

[universal4]

Couldn't the operators just post a notice?

"We apologize for the inconvenience, but if you want a bonus you should have signed up yesterday or wait a few days when we will re-enable the bonus, since we do not allow the bonus for XXXXX game or event"

If necessary, this could even be in the form of a popup or notice on the signup page, and the operator could just remove it once it was no longer a concern.

By placing the responsibility on the affiliate, especially when it is such a short lived event and restriction, those that do edit their pages risk losing the traffic and signups, and those that don't edit their pages will arrive at the operator's site and see the bonus advertised on normal pages as well as see the bonus terms and conditions etc.

In scenario #1 visitor arrives at portal #1 and sees, hey I can't get this bonus today from portal #1 let me visit portal #2 since they didn't edit the page and it says I get the bonus.

In scenario #2 the visitor visits portal #2, thinks they are getting the bonus and visits, signs up and then thinks the portal #2 owner lied to them about a bonus that the operator turned off for the day or event.

In the third scenario, when the operator CLEARLY and transparently explains that it is the operator's choice for not offering the bonus for a specific event and that it out of the control of the portal operator (publisher/advertiser), the visitor then starts out at least not feeling that anyone did not disclose information and can make an informed decision as to whether to sign up or not knowing they will not be eligible for the bonus based upon the notice provided by the operator.

Rick
Universal4

[RacingJim]

Exactomundo Rick. It's not hard is it.

User goes to my site, sees there's an offer on, clicks it and gets a message on the operator site saying sorry this offer isn't available today as it's grand National Day, normal service will be resumed at 6pm on Saturday blah blah. Job done, not hard.

[golfbettingsystem]

Looks like BetVictor have pulled their £25 free bet on the Grand National market this market but still live elsewhere