Revenue Network - Ignition Casino - FUBAR Stats

[PROFRBcom]

The Scenario:

On November 21st, 2021, the category "Poker NGR" for Ignition Casino is a HUGE deviation from normal behavior.

On any given day, we may have 1-2 players with a negative Poker NGR that is > (-$100). This results from bonuses, and players who win money in JackPot Sit and Goes.

On the date in question, we had TWENTY ONE players with Poker NGR that was > (-$200). MOST of these players had a poker NGR that was (-$400) or more and some players had (-$500) or more!

I can only see 2 reasons for this:

1. There is a huge poker promotion I am unaware of that ended/paid out on the 21st and of which Ignition/Revenue Network/our RN liaison did not inform us about (which would be retarded as we are a large poker affiliate).
2. The data is corrupt/bad.

The Search for More Data:

Asking other affiliates to check their Revenue Network accounts for bad data. Specifically:

• Customer Activity Report
• Ignition Casino Tab
• Poker NGR Column
• Sort from low to high (example posted below)
• Look for large negative Poker NGR from individual players
• Compare to other days (unless you are a big affiliate, you probably have zero players on any given day that have negative Poker NGR which exceeds -$100, as this is a rare thing, hence why our average is 1-2 per day, NOT 21!)

The Insanity:

[PROFRBcom]

Mystery solved.

They gave away something like $10,000 worth of tournament tickets to our players without telling us about it.

They also charged us full price for the promotion.

Great business practice.

[rmeeuwsen]

Mystery solved.

They gave away something like $10,000 worth of tournament tickets to our players without telling us about it.

They also charged us full price for the promotion.

Great business practice.

Incredible garbage

[PROFRBcom]

It is a very sly move on their part.

When a poker tournament with a $1,000,000 guarantee fails to meet its guarantee, by virtue of not having enough players register, the site covers the rest, insuring $1,000,000 is paid out.

So if for example, they only get $850,000 worth of entries, they have to shell out $150,000 to cover the overlay. Granted, this is peanuts to a company this big, but it nonetheless costs the poker department a lot of revenue.

With this approach, rather than lose that $150,000 themselves (per the example above), if they give out $150,000 worth of tickets to players who are under an affiliate, they can charge the affiliate full price for the tournament tickets, which comes straight out of the affiliates NGR.

When a bonus is given to a casino or sports player, they almost invariably punt the entire amount back. But when it comes to poker, the affiliate often recoups a SINGLE DIGIT PERCENTAGE of that bonus in rake/tournament fees.

*EDIT: 11,235 in bonus tickets given produced $3,439.50 in rake. This is higher than I expect, but still shifts 70% of the burden to the affiliate*

In essence, they have shifted 90% of the costs of the overlay to affiliates in order to meet their guarantees.

Oh and on top of that, they have a black box for poker rake. If someone rakes $100 and they are winning player (net withdrawer) you, as an affiliate, do NOT get credited for $100 in rake. You may get $70, or $60, or even as low as $50! It is very difficult to figure this out, and they refuse to provide the formula for how rake is calculated. As such, you take the full hit to the face of a $530 tournament ticket deduction, and then you recoup some percentage of that in rake/tournament fees, which they then toss into the black box, and on the other side you get something between 50-100% of the revenue on a per player basis.

/rant

**To any other poker affiliates reading this, we have tried to reverse engineer their black box, with some success. That is, for example, how I know the percentage can be half of the rake which was actually paid. However, we do not have it figured out. If anyone has information on this, I would be happy to share ours in private and/or collaborate on trying to solve this, or at least come to understand it in more detail.

[TheGooner]

I'm not a big poker affiliate but I have a hundred or so players there at revenue network and noticed the large lumps going out from time to time .
I had not realised that they distributed "free" tickets and then lumped it as a charge for affiliates.

I didn't see a lot of activity on Nov 21st - but one player did have a negative Poker NGR of -$641.60 which seemed unlikely.

[PROFRBcom]

but one player did have a negative Poker NGR of -$641.60 which seemed unlikely.

A lot of negative NGR that we see on a daily basis, for poker players, is related to the players playing Jackpot Sit and Goes.

A normal sit and go tournament is one table that pays out the top 3 players. On Ignition and Bovada however, they also have 2 and 3 table sit and goes. However, all of these tournaments have a set price to enter, plus a tournament fee that is typically 8-10% of the entry fee. So for example, a $5 sit and go costs a player $5.50 to enter. The $0.50 is the "rake" which the affiliate gets their percentage of, 10-45%, or 5-22 cents.

Things work differently for Jackpot Sit and Goes. They charge a flat 7% tournament entry fee, but the prize pool is randomly picked for each game from something like 2x the buy in, to 1,000x the buy in, and each game contains 3 players, winner take all.

So for example, a $5 jackpot sit and go costs $5.35 to enter, and Revenue Network keeps the $0.35 instead of sharing it with the affiliate. The affiliate does NOT get a cut of the 7% tournament entry fee. Instead, the affiliate is paid out like a slot machine in the casino.

In other words, if the player loses their $5 entry fee, the affiliate is credited with $5 of Poker NGR. This seems good, but lets see what happens when the multiple changes and the player wins.

Multiple 2x, player wins, affiliate gets hit with -$10 in Poker NGR.

Multiple 10x, player wins, affiliate gets hit with -$50 in Poker NGR.

Multiple 1000x, player loses, affiliate gets $5. Player wins in a 1000x multiple game, affiliate gets hit with -$5,000 Poker NGR.

None of this accounts for the "black box" mojo they run the Poker NGR through either, where winning players rake contribution is less than 100%. Who knows if they penalize affiliates even further, they will not disclose how it works.

So on any given day, if your players play Jackpot sit and go poker games and win, you as an affiliate lose money much like you would if a casino player was winning at slots.

If you as an affiliate are unlucky and get a winning poker player who plays Jackpot sit and goes, YOU LOSE MONEY. How much? You lose whatever your affiliate percentage is of their winnings. So if you have a pro as a customer, and they win $10,000 a month playing Jackpot Sit and Goes, you lose $10,000 * your affiliate percentage each month.... so -$1,000 to -$4,500 depending on your tier.

In other words, if you get a pro, you get the privilege of paying Revenue Network for this customer... forever.

Another way your poker NGR is negative:

Some players get their rewards in the form of Poker Bonuses. The absolute worst scenario is a casino whale redeeming his rewards for thousands of dollars of poker bonuses, and pissing that away on the poker tables.

If they redeem a casino bonus, you get that back as Casino NGR (at 80 cents on the dollar because Revenue Network takes 20% off the top of casino losses). But if they redeem as a poker bonus, all you get as an affiliate, is the rake they generate. So a whale can get a $5,000 poker bonus... and **** that away on the $2,000 buy in poker games in an hour... while paying maybe $100 in rake. Affiliate loses $4,9xx in NGR (you get $100 of rake * your commission back lol).

It is IMPOSSIBLE to make money on some types of players. In fact, you will ALWAYS lose money on them.

It really chaps my ass.

[universal4]

Thanks for posting the example and findings of what happened.

This makes one wonder if promoting the poker product for them, especially on smaller scale is worthwhile.

Rick
Universal4

[Pokerface]

Thanks for posting and everyone's replies. Was not aware .... will be checking very closely.