Stan James - Closed my account

[WATP]

Not even suspending Stan James shows that this place seems to want sponsor money more than they want active affiliates that this place is supposed to help

Agreed. And any response will be a simple 'we are still discussing it with them' / 'we cannot enforce the law' type thing which is about as far as this is going to get surely.

I'm not suggesting GPWA should enforce the law, but obviously the sponsorship is a key factor as I presume it's in the thousands of pounds. I would have hoped this thread was enough evidence to boot them instantly to be honest.

Another reason that regardless of a brand having 'platinum sponsorship' or whatever, I'd rather hear first hand experience from affiliates rather than pay attention to that 'paid for' nonsense or be suckered in by "30% lifetime revenue" rubbish.

[Zuga]

i mean seriously now, it is so freaken obvious they do not give a rats ass about affiliates and their concerns. poor biz practice ....

[casinovegas]

I'm just forwarding the same email to them everyday and I will continue to do so until I get a reply. Hopefully driving someone insane. It's the only option as they won't communicate on here.

[WATP]

I'm just forwarding the same email to them everyday and I will continue to do so until I get a reply. Hopefully driving someone insane. It's the only option as they won't communicate on here.

Maybe it's worth a shot that everyone forwards their complaints here also quoting the thread to give them further evidence: gamblingcommission.gov.uk/gh-contact_us/complaints/complain_gambling_transaction/complain_operator.aspx

Although I see they are based in Gibraltar, so this is the email to contact: gccomplaints@gibraltar.gov.gi - however.. the Gibraltar Commission T&C states:

'Non regulatory issues'

Customers occasionally wish to complain about matters that the regulator does not directly supervise as they are not directly related to the actual gambling, or may even be undertaken for the operator by a third party. These include complaints about chat room members, chat room staff, affiliate payments and 'spam'. Whilst we have an interest in the wider activities and reputation of our licence holders, and will take note of such matters and may bring them to their attention if you have not, we will not normally examine such complaints in any detail.

[pinkytoe]

It's only when affiliates stand up and show that will not be walked on, that programs will stop robbing. I would heavily suggest that everyone affected make a complaint to Gibraltar about this theft.

This would never happen to the likes of Odds checker (they are still promoting Stan James) but the smaller guys (relatively) get shafted. It's in affiliates best interests to make an example out of a program.

[12Xpert]

Won't make any difference. I've tried the regulatory authority route with unethical behaviour from another bookmaker and after a month of deliberation they came back and suggested that I should simply agree with the bookmaker because they had not violated any T&Cs. Technically they hadn't but preventing someone from competing in their competition that had been going on for 20 months (having placed in excess of £50,000 turnover) by limiting my stakes in such a way as to ensure that I could not fulfil the terms of the competition, with a customer services explanation that this was too bad, was in my view totally unacceptable.

The bottom line is that the regulatory bodies are basically toothless (they just exist to demonstrate that governments care about problem gambling) and bookmakers fall back on their T&Cs which will always have something in them to the effect that they reserve the right to do what they want without any explanation provided. This is as true of punters' accounts as it is of affiliates' accounts.

Webmasters can make a point of publicising the behaviour of Stan James, but ultimately Stan James' own business practices essentially represent a long term suicide mission, and in that sense it was probably inevitable that all but the biggest affiliates were going to get dropped at this time. I know I have been one of the biggest over the years based on commission earnings and the freebies they have given me over the years (trips to the darts and horse racing etc) but ultimately this partnership in the face of obviously financial pressure counts for nothing.

Just put send the traffic to Bet365 instead. It's better quality traffic with much higher earnings potential, and whilst they remain the top dog amongst bookmakers there is essentially zero chance of them dumping on you, particularly in view of the fact that they don't employ a no negative rollover.

[12Xpert]

Just by way of further information to compare the success of Stan James with Bet365 take a look at the reported numbers here:

https://www.duedil.com/company/04241...ted/financials
https://www.duedil.com/company/02050...ted/financials

Of course the Stan James Abingdon company is not the same as the Gibraltar PLC but it give you an idea. Based on internet traffic we can't expect Stan James online to be radically much different to it's UK shops business, and certainly closing longstanding affiliate accounts is not evidence of a brand doing well.

Bet365's turnover in the year to March 2013 was almost £1 billion !!!
Stan James's turnover in the 2012 calendar year was about £118 million

bet365's operating profit in the year to March 2013 was £145 million. The last time it made an operating loss was 2002.
Stan James's operating loss in the 2012 calendar year was -£1.8 million. The last time it made an operating profit was 2007.

You can see form their historical turnover figures that Stan James were previously doing much better (about 3 to 4 times better in terms of turnover). Then something happened in 2009 and they haven't properly recovered since that time. This was something to do with all the various online buyouts and mergers they were engaged in at that time (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_James)

It would seem perfectly obvious to me that Stan James as an entity is struggling. Getting rid of a load of affiliates can save them a lot of money. Suppose they've dumped 250 high earning affiliates who average £1,000 per month in commission. This translates into a total saving of £3,000,000 per annum. That is close to double their last reported operating loss for the UK LTd company.

[12Xpert]

Incidentally, how long does it take for posts that are queued for moderation to be added, and if they are not added, is an explanation given?

For the record I followed my last post with some data comparing Bet365's profit making with Stan James Ltd's loss making just to highlight the probable reason by affiliates have been screwed, theorising that if 250 affiliate earning an average £1,000 monthly commission were culled this would save Stan James £3 million per annum. Perhaps GPWA didn't like the posting of urls. But it's been more than 24 hours since I posted it and nothing. Hardly inspires me with confidence when others on this thread are not getting the answers they are asking for regarding Stan James and their relationship with GPWA

[universal4]

Sorry about that 12xpert, your post went into automatic moderation because there was a few external links in it, since you have a low post count.

Your speculation about the moderation was not correct.

I approved the post since it is certainly on topic.

Rick
Universal4

[slotplayer]

Did they lock the player accounts that were winnning too much?
Seems to me that would be the solution.

[12Xpert]

We are never going to find out now because it's impossible for locked account holders to check reports and Stan James Affiliates refuse to reply to anyone.

However, in the 82 months between July 2007 and April 2014 I can see from my tax accounting that I was paid a commission in 63 of those months (that a positive net revenue rate of nearly 77%). Whilst I can't see what the figures were for the months that were negative net revenue which were then subsequently set to zero for the following month, statistically over such a long period it would be reasonable to assume that those negative months were similar in absolute magnitude to the positive months, with all figures normally distributed about a mean that was closely related to Stan James typical profit margin.

Fortuitously I downloaded some sports betting player data last December. Casino, games and poker are excluded (I deleted it all). The period covers 2004 to 2013.

The average profit over turnover for Stan James from these sports players was 5.62%. 72% of those players were losing players which is more or less typical across all the bookmakers which I have analysed affiliate player data.

14.6% of players won more than £100. That compares to 26.0% of players who lost more than £100.

25% of players ended up placing at least 100 bets, whilst 2.5% of them placed over 1,000 bets. 73% of those players that placed at least 100 bets were losing players, more or less the same as for the overall sample.

Those 25% of players accounted for 68% of the turnover (a la Pareto Principle) and they delivered a profit over turnover for Stan James of 9.9%

I think from all of this data it fairly self evident that my referrals were not winning too much. Granted, perhaps there were some casino and games players that might have been doing so but of course I can't access that data any more. I have, however, a column of Total Commission which I seemingly failed to delete when I was cleaning up my downloaded sports player data. Whilst this shows that non sports players must have won overall since the Total commission figure is lower than the Sports commission figure, it is in fact only 11% lower.

It's probably also true that this player data does not represent a complete set since the Total commission figure is nothing like the amount of commission I've been paid over the period. Either that means that the Income Access was not properly recording older player data, not properly recording current player data since Stan James joined them, or that Stan James had totally messed up their commission payments process.

I stand by what I've said. Stan James have closed a lot of affiliates' accounts to save money. Given the number of big affiliates that have reported that their accounts have been closed, the only way for this to be solely a matter of these accounts being losing accounts for Stan James is if Stan James don't know how to set odds. But given that they close winning punter accounts quicker than almost any other UK brand, it's difficult to see how Stan James could ever find themselves in a position where they have a losing gross percentage from their sports players. They only want mugs.

No, their problem stems from the fact that the UK Ltd company is year on year losing money, and that now the online Plc Gibraltar outfit is losing traffic and gaining a poor reputation amongst players for banning players. Culling big affiliates is a cost saving exercise, but it won't help because they are not addressing the core problem, at least with the online players, which is that they ban them too quickly and too much. Ultimately this affects not only reputation but turnover. If you don't have players betting, you simply can't sustain the turnover, and without turnover, profitability become much more variable simply because risk has increased. Pinnacle Sports can accommodate winning players because their business model explicitly recognises that those winners are not only paid for by the losing punters, but that they increase turnover thereby driving up the efficiency of the betting markets and lowering risk. More efficient markets means they can accept ever higher stakes and offer ever better margins. In contrast, Stan James, like many other UK/European brands, have this ego thing going on where they see their traders as part of the action (they told me so themselves). It's pathetic, it does not represent the future of sports bookmaking, and those that insist on trying to hold on to this 18th century model are going to find themselves beaten in this winner takes all market.

Just be way of example, the average stake of my referred Stan James players was £18.39. For Pinnacle Sports it has been US$361.98 which roughly translates into £226, more than 12 times the size. Total turnover from my referred Pinnacle Sports players was over 16 times greater, despite that coming from less than a third of the number of players.

Businesses that treat their customers like Stan James treats theirs invariably find themselves consigned to the refuse tip of history where they belong.

[crowngate]

Have stan james been suspended as a sponser to the gpwa?

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[grem]

It is probably more than just £1,000 average for affiliate accounts they are closing. Who knows maybe more that can include some generous players. It certainly adds up and I guess they did not do the calculation of the future income lost as a result.

[thebookiesoffers]

Have stan james been suspended as a sponser to the gpwa?

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

have they 'eck

[casinovegas]

Well over a month now since this thread was started and still no official reply.......

[-Shay-]

Well over a month now since this thread was started and still no official reply.......

And no official reaction or stand from GPWA either.

[12Xpert]

The no negative rollover policy should not be the cause of their financial difficulties. Other affiliate programmes use it and clearly they must all have costed it properly. And if it is a problem, just don't use it. In fact, they even say in their terms and conditions that they reserve the right to roll over negatives. But not one affiliate whose account has been terminated without notice has mentioned that this was ever proposed by the affiliate team as an option. It hasn't because there was never any intention to invoke it, rather just apply summary executions across the board.

Based on my reported figures, the effect of having a no negative rollover meant that to Stan James the 30% rev share effectively became a 54% rev share with a negative rollover. If that is typical for other affiliates then Stan James should still be making about £1 for every £2 of revenue their affiliates send them. Even after affiliate programme costs there should still be a healthy profit. If there isn't then it would add further weight to Stan James' inability to run a profitable business. But I suspect that the affiliate business has been very profitable for them to date but other corporate failures have meant that they have to take a sledgehammer to it to save some money, and it's a good way of doing that in the short term. In the long term, the impact to their reputation may do far more damage, and if it does, they'll get everything they deserve for treating customers and partners like that.

[TheGooner]

Some good data, great analysis, and sound conclusions 12Xpert - thanks for your posts.

Unfortunately, I have nothing tangible to add as I have no data for Stan James, we never promoted them at all. I was going to go into a long diatribe about sports betting and negative carryover issues for programs - but it's all conjecture on my part as I have no real knowledge from inside this program.

But generally, giving away 54% of profits (as you projected) in an affiliate program is just too high, and does not really allow much leeway for all the other overhead costs of running the business. Direct costs (bonuses, banking fees, licensing etc) are charged but there is a whole lot more that must get lumped into the affiliate business.

Most industries are offering 5-10% sales affiliate fees, some virtual products do get into the 15-20% range but it's only online gaming that thinks it can do this level of reward 30-40% with an NCO clause and survive...

I wouldn't do their role for a 48% share ... would you?

[12Xpert]

Good post but I don't fully agree. Yes, I would do it for a 50-50 split. Petrol retailers have a mark-up of just 1 to 2%.

Stan James has a typical book margin of 5 to 10% depending on the market. Meanwhile, Pinnacle Sports has a typical margin of just 2%. Stan James should easily be able to accommodate a more generous affiliate package, if that's what they want to offer. Even if all of its revenue came from affiliates and all were on an effective 50-50 profit share, this would still mean that Stan James' margin would be bigger than Pinnacle Sports. If they can't make a profit, then they need to look at why, and it won't have anything to do with the affiliates or the affiliate programme.

Stan James sees fit to offer more generous (by which I mean inefficient) betting odds compared to Pinnacle Sports (I don't mean the margin here) with a view to attracting customers. Why don't they address this core problem (their odds inefficiency) rather than apply slash and burn tactics to their affiliate programme? It's their intentional odds inefficiency which means they have to ban more sophisticated punters. This will cost them turnover, and hence profit.

In general, yes, I would accept that bookmakers who offer no negative rollover are taking on more risk, but if those risks are hedged properly, like any bookmaker should know how to do, then potentially the affiliates should not that much to worry about. But the fact that Stan James's core UK business has been losing money says to me that they don't know how to manage risk, and my contention is that this has to do with their inability to understand the economics of 21st century bookmaking since the advent of the exchanges, Pinnacle and the Asian brands.

That is the problem, not affiliates sending them winners (which they aren't), but a product that more and more people either don't like or they themselves won't allow them to use.

[Roulette Zeitung]

You can discuss one more year about this program. The real problem ist this:

Read carefully!

"Negative Carryover:Partial, If the Net Revenues for any calendar month is a negative figure then Stan James standard policy is that, at the end of that calendar month, the negative figure will be waived and the Net Revenue figure will be reset at zero for the subsequent calendar month. However Stan James reserve the right to carry that negative figure forward to future months and only pay Commission when the cumulative Net Revenue is a positive figure."

No-Negative-Carryover looks so nice, but in real business life it's in general a Sword of Damocles!

What, if an affiliate is producing -$5.000 in April, +$10 in May, -$7.000 in June and +$600 in July?

He claims his $610, and the program looks like a drowned rat in celebrating a loss of $11.390.

It's a general problem and a reason why thread like this one exist.

Leopold