Check your William Hill revenue share

[footballaffiliate]

Was at an affiliate get together at the weekend and a lot of affiliates were telling me they were getting screwed by William Hill after the move to Netrefer. It seems that in early January they've gone through and have enforced their new stricter terms and conditions. For example, they can drop your "lifetime" revenue share to just 5% due to their minimum player quotas they've now put in (see below).

Yet another example of how difficult this company is to work with and why affiliates should avoid them.

Here are their T&Cs - Affiliates United - Terms and conditions

At any time where 3 calendar months have passed without the Affiliate directing any Customers to the Operator’s Sites, the default Revenue Reward set out in the table above and any other Revenue Reward agreed by the parties in writing at any time shall no longer apply and instead shall be set at 5% of all Online Gaming Products and Sportsbook.

The Operator has a negative carry-over policy, meaning that any negative balance in the Affiliate’s Affiliate account will be carried over to subsequent months and will be set-off against the payments due to the Affiliate in the subsequent months, until the full negative balance is thus set-off.

 

[honestgaz]

I think they're all going to go like this soon. Theres a certain group of people who are cornering the online gambling market and they are encircling like sharks ready to take out ALL small to medium sized affiliates. And then they will take out the big boys, and game over, they will own the lot!

 

[footballaffiliate]

I think they're all going to go like this soon. Theres a certain group of people who are cornering the online gambling market and they are encircling like sharks ready to take out ALL small to medium sized affiliates. And then they will take out the big boys, and game over, they will own the lot!

Or we could all just club together and advertise the honest bet365 and screw the likes of these sharks. Certainly William Hill bigs itself up, but it's piling money on advertising like there's no tomorrow. The feeling in the industry from the other big boys is that Will Hill and a few other companies are going for broke.

 

[KasinoKing]

Or we could all just club together and advertise the honest bet365 and screw the likes of these sharks. Certainly William Hill bigs itself up, but it's piling money on advertising like there's no tomorrow. The feeling in the industry from the other big boys is that Will Hill and a few other companies are going for broke.

Personally I wouldn't put all my eggs in the Bet365 basket - have spent a total of about 3 years (out of 7) in the red with them due to NCO...

It's fairly obvious that Will Hills operating model is now to spend 90% of their advertising budget on TV and other "mainstream" promotions, and 10 % on affiliates like us.
Bottom line is - they don't really need (or want) us - and we certainly don't need them.
Best thing all affiliates can do is just dump them before they dump you.
I gave them the boot 2 years ago and don't miss them one bit.

KK

 

[footballaffiliate]

Personally I wouldn't put all my eggs in the Bet365 basket - have spent a total of about 3 years (out of 7) in the red with them due to NCO...

It's fairly obvious that Will Hills operating model is now to spend 90% of their advertising budget on TV and other "mainstream" promotions, and 10 % on affiliates like us.
Bottom line is - they don't really need (or want) us - and we certainly don't need them.
Best thing all affiliates can do is just dump them before they dump you.
I gave them the boot 2 years ago and don't miss them one bit.

KK

Nasty NCO - it is tough with sports betting though. Margins are so small and you can even have hundreds of active players and still end up in the red. Makes me wonder how some bookies survive - I suppose they don't make a lot of money out of sports - it's more about the cross-sell which makes you realise how important it is to affiliate with programs that have cross product earnings and do not bundle. Paddy Power are the worst for no cross-product. Affiliates must lose a lot of money due to no cross product.

How many active players do you have on bet365?

Agree on Will Hills - their strategy for a few years seems to have been - pile millions on trying to act like the biggest player in the industry and push home the brand awareness to try defeat bet365. They even swagger into the conferences every year as the platinum sponsor and go big on the advertising, while bet365 sit there in the background laughing at their attempts to beat them. It's funny actually - you talk to Ladbrokes, Will Hill or any other second rate players, and they're not just interested in advertising space, they're actually more interested in replacing bet365 on your sites - they're actively out to remove the competition ahead of just getting ad space.

However, Will Hill don't have the product to be the biggest player! Their website is average. Punters don't stick with them and there isn't great retention. I think they've got the wrong strategy completely, and it's going to be an expensive experiment for them. In contrast bet365 is fully on board with affiliates and appreciates their value. They also advertise strongly globally - watch any obscure match from South America and you'll see bet365 on the bill boards. Will Hill is jut trying to get the premium market and it will fail up against bet365.

Would agree with your comments wholly. Drop Will Hill before they drop you! We've already seen their promise of "lifetime" revenue share dropped to 5% if you don't refer a player in 3 months.

Who do you advertise on sports if you don't do bet365?

 

[FictionNet]

Yeah, December 2013 revenue figure was cut to a fraction of what it was at month end. I'm not even going to bother talking to WH about it, as I'm picky about who I talk to.

 

[footballaffiliate]

Yeah, December 2013 revenue figure was cut to a fraction of what it was at month end. I'm not even going to bother talking to WH about it, as I'm picky about who I talk to.

Ouch. They really are sneaky at William Hill. A lot of affiliates told me about it so it looks like they've taken a swipe right through a lot of small affiliates. It's stealing really. Completely bad behaviour.

 

[footballaffiliate]

The iGB conference people whoever they are should kick William Hill out from being the main sponsor every year. However, they're probably as tick as thieves along with them. Money talks in this industry. Afterall, which affiliate is going to sue a bunch of guys based in an office in Tel Aviv? I really hope William Hill get their karma one day with some big law suit or government investigation into their bad practices. Now there's a thought

 

[Vladi]

William Hill died the day they let cpays take over their affiliate program. I would expect nothing less from these people. Of course they will tell you that all the cpays people are gone etc but its obvious that the business methods and lack of ethics remain the same.

 

[AussieDave]

Affiliates generally don't stand united until it affects then on a combined front. When GP pulled their stunt, that was a prime opportunity, for those affected, to take out a class action suit on the ass of GP. Instead, 2 years or so got wasted on forum debating the issue and telling GP how naughty they were.

If the affiliates who were claiming huge loses with the GP stunt, had acted with court action, other programs would have thought twice. Since GP got away with screwing their partners, other programs have since tried it on too. What's taking place these days with quota's, high roller clauses etc etc, is the catalyst of all affiliates not standing up against this tyranny.

Hate to say it but it's going to get a hell of a lot worse.

 

[KasinoKing]

How many active players do you have on bet365?

Oh, it's pathetic: Over the 7 years I only have 14 depositing players - and only 1 or 2 are active per month.
But remember I am only promoting their CASINO - and it's Playtech, which is historically by far the worst performing software brand for me.

Who do you advertise on sports if you don't do bet365?

I don't advertise Sport Betting. I have a "Sports" page which has been Work-in Progress for about 3 years - and likely to stay that way!
Ironically though, 97% of the commission I've made over the last year with Bet365 has been from Sports betting!
Looks like I have just 1 VERY active sports bettor: Last 3 months = $19,000+ in bets, but only $200 in net revenue!

KK

 

[footballaffiliate]

Looks like I have just 1 VERY active sports bettor: Last 3 months = $19,000+ in bets, but only $200 in net revenue!

Can be that way on sports - i'd say you can, on average, expect your total revenue in any month to be anything from 0.5% to 2% of turnover at best - and we're running quite high volume accounts over a few bookmakers. It's tough to make any money in sports!

 

[footballaffiliate]

Affiliates generally don't stand united until it affects then on a combined front. When GP pulled their stunt, that was a prime opportunity, for those affected, to take out a class action suit on the ass of GP. Instead, 2 years or so got wasted on forum debating the issue and telling GP how naughty they were.

If the affiliates who were claiming huge loses with the GP stunt, had acted with court action, other programs would have thought twice. Since GP got away with screwing their partners, other programs have since tried it on too. What's taking place these days with quota's, high roller clauses etc etc, is the catalyst of all affiliates not standing up against this tyranny.

Hate to say it but it's going to get a hell of a lot worse.

All very true. I do worry constantly about the health of the industry going forward. It's such a shame some of the biggest brands are run by the worst people and with the worst ethics. They don't understand that if they played nice they'd make a hell of a lot more money from good affiliates. Instead their business model is to rob and pillage affiliates as much as they can.

That said, there are some affiliate programs emerging who base their whole business model on good ethics. However they're not big enough brands yet to convert. But, further down the line perhaps the industry will police itself in a way - the new ethical entrants to the market will take market share and the bad guys will realise too late and try to play catch up, and then realise they have no respect or loyalty left in the affiliate industry and shut down their programs in favour of traditional, more costly advertising.

 

[Insider]

Personally I wouldn't put all my eggs in the Bet365 basket - have spent a total of about 3 years (out of 7) in the red with them due to NCO...

It's fairly obvious that Will Hills operating model is now to spend 90% of their advertising budget on TV and other "mainstream" promotions, and 10 % on affiliates like us.
Bottom line is - they don't really need (or want) us - and we certainly don't need them.
Best thing all affiliates can do is just dump them before they dump you.
I gave them the boot 2 years ago and don't miss them one bit.

KK

I totally agree with you KK and this is also our opinion since a longer time.

We tried to give them several chances but we notice that they are worse than a bunch of greedy hyenas.

The casinos self are totally okay although KK don't like playtech software ;D

But what they do with their partners is not acceptable.

NCO is already worse but 5% brings the barrel over.

They should quietly promote on TV campaigns and hopefully they will get someday one shot for the bug.

Our consequences are that we kicked or redirected them all out from our network but on a few single site listed we still must do.

We absolutly don't need them.

Bye Bye WH

 

[footballaffiliate]

The inactivity 5% rev share rule is ridiculous. Who in the William Hill business thought that this change would have a positive effect? The only "positive" effect this sort of term can have is if your business strategy is to slim down and get rid of all of your small affiliates and have nothing more to do with them.

RIP William Hill.

 

[Vladi]

But that IS the strategy.

They are big enough and have a large enough marketing budget to make the contribution from small affiliates not worth the effort involved. Thats sucks, but I can think of a lot worse things to say about them than that.

 

[Viriatu]

The iGB conference people whoever they are should kick William Hill out from being the main sponsor every year. However, they're probably as tick as thieves along with them. Money talks in this industry. Afterall, which affiliate is going to sue a bunch of guys based in an office in Tel Aviv? I really hope William Hill get their karma one day with some big law suit or government investigation into their bad practices. Now there's a thought

Truth is, no one has the balls to talk a spade like a spade in what concerns the constant thievery that israel based affiliate platforms do to small affiliates, people inside KNOW there are groups of organized thieves that control not only many affiliate lists, software owners and aff programs, they now are on a trend of buying up entire site networks and sites from former webmasters quitting or even active affiliates, not long ago i received a proposal to sell casinobonus to one such a firm, that i found out later was a front to a israel based media company. Of course no one speaks about this shit openly afraid of looking bad or something...

This industry is all corrupted, we better start getting our shit together and make a stand or it wont be much but crumbs soon enough.

 

[footballaffiliate]

I wouldn't be surprised if this theory was correct. I flatly refuse to work with any Israeli based programs anymore. Nothing to do with being anti-Israeli for no reason - it's due to the fact that I've been screwed too many times by programs based here, and in business when you see a trend you better do something about it or go out of business. Just the same as if I got screwed by several Gibraltar based programs - I would drop my Gibraltar clients overnight or keep them at a safe distance.

I do worry though - when and how are these unscrupulous programs going to be stopped?

 

[Viriatu]

for affiliate issues i think we wont stand no chance aside from making killer sites and site networks and keep a foot in the organic search... other than that i think it is all about sticking together.

 

[footballaffiliate]

for affiliate issues i think we wont stand no chance aside from making killer sites and site networks and keep a foot in the organic search... other than that i think it is all about sticking together.

I think the best way to stick it to these bad companies is to directly advertise their rivals and screw them that way. They already hate it when they know you're putting their rivals in top positions.

Going to LAC Viriatu? Perhaps we should start up a closed group/get together where affiliates can voice their concerns about companies without those companies watching forums.