Recap of "Affiliate Marketing Grows Up" seminar at G2E

[The Buzz]

At last week's Global Gaming Expo (G2E) there was a seminar titled, “Affiliate Marketing Grows Up: Implications for the Regulated U.S. Online Gambling Market," with a panel featuring former Tropicana iGaming executive Christopher Capra, Hard Rock Director of Online Gaming Lee Terfloth, Catena Media Acting Director U.S. Chris Grove and Paysafe Marketing Director Erica Anderson.

USBets.com did a nice job of recapping the seminar, including these highlights:

Anderson said that a perk for gaming operators is that affiliates get paid based on carefully measured results, unlike some other partnerships the operators have. She added that affiliates in Europe often get a share of the net revenue of new player acquisitions.

But Grove said that as legal online casino gaming and sports betting grow in the U.S., that approach isn’t likely to flower because once an affiliate gains that share, “historically the minute that you touch a percentage of the revenue — once you dip a toe in that stream in the U.S. — you enter a new level of licensure. That’s been the case in New Jersey, and it will be the case in Pennsylvania, and likely in a number of states as we roll out.

“We call [the higher level of scrutiny] a full cavity search,” Grove added, drawing a laugh from the audience.

Grove said that more than a decade ago, the industry was dominated by “a couple of small shops. You had teams of freelancers or a couple of people working as teams … That has changed. You have seen a lot of consolidation over the last few years, and with that consolidation comes the second big change, which is professionalism. The larger affiliates more closely mirror the organizations and the structures of the companies that they work with on the operator end.”

The inevitable third trend, Grove added, is that more of the former companies become public companies — his Catena is an example, Grove said, as is XL Media. European companies have been consolidating independent affiliates and using it as a “rollup strategy” before using public funds to increase their power.

“In my experience so far, regulation of affiliates in the U.S. [basically meaning, New Jersey] is really drawing that definitive line between you’re on the regulated side or you’re on the black market,” Grove added. “And if you persist being on the side of the black market, we will note that and there will be consequences not just in [that] jurisdiction but in jurisdictions to come. That’s frankly an excellent hammer for beating down demand for the black market.”

Read more here: https://www.usbets.com/how-casino-op...tomers-online/