PokerStars Partners to suspend/close affiliate accounts - illegal american sites

i just received an email from pokerstarspartners, stating among others the following:

"
Illegal Website Promotion

A kind reminder that Affiliates are not allowed to display our banners on any illegal streaming website, Torrent, Adult, or other websites that do not comply with point 2.3 of our Terms & Conditions

Illegal American Websites

We are unable to work with affiliates who display our brands next to poker rooms or sportsbooks who accept American players, illegally. If the operator is not approved by the NJ DGE then you must remove their banner.

Please note: Failure to comply with either of the above may result in your account being suspended or closed. Contact your Affiliate Manager or affiliates@pokerstarspartners.com if you need any clarification.
"

I guess this is the right time for me to take a decision myself and cancel my account with them, as the player value always sucked somehow.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by yeahfree

i just received an email from pokerstarspartners, stating among others the following:

Illegal American Websites

We are unable to work with affiliates who display our brands next to poker rooms or sportsbooks who accept American players, illegally. If the operator is not approved by the NJ DGE then you must remove their banner.

Please note: Failure to comply with either of the above may result in your account being suspended or closed. Contact your Affiliate Manager or affiliates@pokerstarspartners.com if you need any clarification.
"

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I expect to see a lot more of this from any operator that engages in the emerging regulated market in the United States, they can't risk licensing issues (especially brands like Stars with a black mark for past behavior). So, cutting off Stars might be just a temporary fix for you.

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Originally Posted by MJM

I expect to see a lot more of this from any operator that engages in the emerging regulated market in the United States, they can't risk licensing issues (especially brands like Stars with a black mark for past behavior). So, cutting off Stars might be just a temporary fix for you.

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totally true. we will be forced to choose sides more and more, black or white.

Honestly, this is just PokerStars bullying affiliates in an effort to decrease their competition. Have you ever heard of someone being convicted of "guilt by association"? Of course not, the idea that this has anything to do with legality is just ridiculous, and I told PokerStars as much when they sent me the same email.

After I told them that I wouldn't be dropping a site with mediocre affiliate rewards, but amazing player rewards to appease a site with atrocious affiliate rewards and even worse player rewards, they sent me another email that included the following line:

Could I ask that you remove PokerStars from your website, with immediate effect.

To which I replied, "Lol...why would I remove PokerStars from my website? I don't need your permission to review your product!"

So now my PokerStars review will provide banners/links to better sites instead. They seemed to think that I was just going to delete my PokerStars pages, but I'm going to send as much of that traffic as I can to other sites instead!

Pokerstars doesn't need an affiliate program. They dominate poker organic results. They have only kept it alive for hundreds of thousands of linkbacks.

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Originally Posted by toppokervalue

So now my PokerStars review will provide banners/links to better sites instead. They seemed to think that I was just going to delete my PokerStars pages, but I'm going to send as much of that traffic as I can to other sites instead!

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Haha nice! I do not know why pokerstars is getting so greedy, I use to play a lot and wasted a lot of money and time and as the other guy say they dominate the poker organic market and they want more, what other sites are you going to send the traffic? sorry for asking

With their newly designed affiliate program, you have to change your links.

I took that as trigger to finally remove them from my sites / redirect the links to other operators after promoting them with very limited success for almost 10 years.

Related issue is with sports betting also. Any affiliate who believes that offshore sportsbooks will be able to compete for American player base after say for the sake of an example, five years, has misplaced information. Europe is way backward when compared to the entrepreneurship and ingenuity of the American capitalism.

Competing within the legal betting structure would be an enormous task for the online affiliates; let alone promoting illegal brands.

There is a reason large offshore players are now aggressively moving towards the Asian markets, where their survivability has some chance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by yeahfree

I guess this is the right time for me to take a decision myself and cancel my account with them, as the player value always sucked somehow.

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We got that email a few months ago. It resulted in riotous laughter here! Tears of laughter were shed.

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Originally Posted by toppokervalue

Honestly, this is just PokerStars bullying affiliates in an effort to decrease their competition. So now my PokerStars review will provide banners/links to better sites instead. They seemed to think that I was just going to delete my PokerStars pages, but I'm going to send as much of that traffic as I can to other sites instead!

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This also is the tactic we took!

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Originally Posted by Malikbhai

Pokerstars doesn't need an affiliate program. They dominate poker organic results. They have only kept it alive for hundreds of thousands of linkbacks.

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They do. For now. Their traffic has been decreasing ever since Amaya bought them out however. And the more and more they push away affiliates, the more they will lose in that regard. Eventually, they will be taken down.

One thing that would expedite and facillitate that take down would be if all affiliates who receive this ridiculous email from Stars changed their reviews to a negative tone to reflect the garbage treatment AmayaStars doles out to affiliates and players alike. Imagine what hundreds of negative reviews suddently popping up on Google's radar would do to the "authority" and prestige of PokerStars? It would move the needle, I guarantee!

For that matter, I'm willing to dish out a little money to anyone reading this who might be considering including some of my views on the matter in their PokerStars reviews. PM me :)