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I don’t promote Party or Empire – But these recent events are going to set a worrying precendent if allowed to go unchecked. As a community we managed to get programs such as FA, Referback etc to reverse their punitive changes to their T & C’s which they introduced last summer.
I believe we now have to take a similar stance with Party’s latest dealings with the affiliate community. 2006 is undoubtedly going to be the year where many programs go on acquisition drives – If Party’s treatment of Empire Affiliates is allowed to happen, I fear they will not be the only program we will collectively be shafted by as a result.
Who is at fault here?
Party for buying out a super affiliate (Tradal)?
Tradal for selling their position and players to Party for an enormous profit?
When you refer players to a super affiliate or third party middleman you always run the risk that they may sell those accounts.
I am in the same boat as everyone else in this deal as I earn thousands each month from players I refered to Empire, but I am not sure who to blame or pursue.
Party isnt really at fault in my eyes, because they paid handsomely for those players and I cant imagine them paying TWICE for the same players.
Tradal will make the argument that they DID pay us in good faith for years for those players via Net Rev or CPA (shudders) so they met their obligations. Now they no longer own the players.
This one is not easy to sort out.
:confused:
Mind me! This is as strong a warning as I can issue!
With all the consolidations, mergers, buyouts and take overs we will see in this year, and believe me, it will be substantial, if we let this slide we will all be screwed royally.
This is worse than when the programs breached contracts last year.
This will cost us all our player bases.
This and Casino Pays and Partnerpage are precedents.
If we do nothing, they will all walk all over us!
Affiliate matters HAVE TO BE PART OF PURCHASE NEGOTIATIONS!!!!!!
WE are supposedly owning the players they are selling! At least a percentage of their value! We can’t let them steal even once, or they will all do it!
We need to punish programs that do not include affiliate matters in their deals.
We need to reward programs that map over players, like Casino Rewards.
This is by far the worst and most serious situation I have seen us face because I am aware of all the mergers that are about to happen. Tons this year.
Please listen to me, I am sure I am right. Give me the benefit of the doubt, I was right last time I issued a warning too!
We have to act.
Tradal and anything linked to this scumbag if doomed. Nothing but a bunch of mobsters. A bunch of greed head scam artists, money guides their souls. The poor bastards. greek39
Dom you are ranting.
Who do we take action against and why?
Party for aquiring Empire?
Tradal for Selling Empire for an enormous profit? I would have done the same for the metrics involved?
I understand that we as affiliates are upset about a loss of income, but I dont see what horrible transgression has been commited.
Was Party NOT supposed to buy Empire if it made good business sense for them to do so? Did they not already pay Empire through the nose to acquire these players? Are they supposed to pay again?
You didnt address a single issue I raised in my previous post. And I do think they are valid questions.
I am not saying we should do nothing, but what I am trying to do is determine a rational response or plan.
Greek throwing rocks at tradal isnt going to help our cause either. Lets figure out a logical business oriented game plan.
Affiliate matters HAVE TO BE PART OF PURCHASE NEGOTIATIONS!!!!!!
WE are supposedly owning the players they are selling! At least a percentage of their value! We can’t let them steal even once, or they will all do it!
Dom I know what you are saying, but what legal or business principal are you basing this on?
From a practical standpoint are you saying Empire should have asked its affiliates to approve the sale of their company? What if 20% of affiliates didnt agree? What price would have been fair for “lifetime players”?
If Party wasnt acquiring the player base then what value was Empire to them?
I have a lot of questions about whats fair and equitable for all parties in this situation. If we can determine that then I am all for acting as a group to acheive those ends.
They could have settled with affiliates for the percentage of the player owned by the affiliate. As in if you make 30% of the profits the player brings, 30% of the sales price of that player is yours.
Of course Tradal won’t cough that up now – BECAUSE AFFILIATES WERE NOT CONSIDERED IN THE DEAL!
It was also a hostile deal and the more we push the more these two parties will point at each other and refuse to deal with us, each blaming the other.
In this case we look to be pretty fucked – and what is this with the two closed casinos? Same thing, and Party owned them all along!!! Tradal never owned those at all.
How did Rewards do it? They migrated all the Integrity players and mapped them to the appropriate affiliates.
I bet Wager Junction will do the same thing. Some of the mergers planned now are planning to also map players – but if it isn’t necessary because affiliates sit still when they are left out of the equation, why would they do that? Much more profitable to just make them house players.
I bet Party and Tradal never even mentioned the word “affiliate” in the entire transaction.
I predict that we will have lost most of our player bases a year from now if we don’t find some way to make a stand.
We will see a repeat of the T&C mess, one gets away without mapping players over and all will do it.
We need to hold Party responsible.
Casino Rewards kept the referral list intact when they took over Captain Cooks et al. Obviously it can be done.
Why do you suppose CR did this? To be “nice?” Doubtful — more than likely, they knew that if they didn’t map the players over, there would be a huge outcry from the affiliates who referred “lifetime” players to the Captain Cooks casinos. CR realized that if they didn’t map the players, they would lose the respect and business of the affiliate community — much like what is going to happen with Party now.
Mapping over the players is “the right thing to do.” Legally, I don’t know if they are obligated to do this. But that doesn’t really matter. The bottom line is, Party chose not to do the right thing. I will not support a program that is not affiliate-friendly.
Dominique is right, and this is exactly what I said in my post yesterday or the day before — if we do nothing about this, if we sit back and take this quietly, it will happen over, and over, and over again in the coming year.
My response will be to create a lot of public pressure and negative publicity against PartyPartners. I’m going to post my opinions here and elsewhere, and I’m going to add them to my site’s blacklist. I don’t see what else I can do, really, short of taking legal action (and as I said, I don’t know if we would have a strong case).
I do believe Party is the group to hold responsible here, not Empire. The new owner is responsible for taking care of the acquired business. Casino Rewards (not Captain Cooks) was responsible for mapping over the players from Captain Cooks. Logically it just makes sense for Party to be the responsible party here (no pun intended).
I don’t care how much they paid for the players. Their actions are anti-affiliate in nature. Affiliates need to stop promoting them so that they can’t afford (financially) to buy up any additional properties.
We absolutely need to stand up and make a big fuss about this now.
Negative publicity tends to work, especially if players get to see some of it.
I agree that since party partners acquired the business and the players… they therefore owe us future commission on those refered players. Let’s also be honest, 20-30% commission on those future players would not hurt them, this is just a matter of greed and finding loopholes to harm us. This is far from treating us like partners.
As if stealing our income isn’t enough they have the balls to slap us in the face and ask us to replace our old trackers so that we can start sending players from scratch.
They recently stole all of our players from casinos that they owned all along such as starluck casino. Those players are reportedly being switched over to partycasino. Why are we not compensated for those players anymore? Both casinos are owned by the same entity.
This is a clear indication of how party partners feels about it’s so called partners. I’m not going to claim that we can sue them. All affiliates combined could not find the funds to sue them. Party partners simply drag it out in court until we all ran out of money. This is the nature of the legal system, it’s set up to earn money for lawyers. The entity who wins is the entity who has the best lawyers and the most money. We would never recover enough lost funds to warrant doing this.
The only thing that we can do is cease to do business with partypartners. I will also cease to do business with tradal for not ensuring the well being of thier affiliates who made them who they are.
I will not be promoting Empire Poker or any tradal properties going forward.
I will not be promoting party casino.
I have removed starluck casino from my websites, I will also remove all of planetluck.
I will leave partypoker up temporarily until this is resolved or there is some attempt in good faith by party partners to repair the damage. If something is not done then I will remove partypoker and recommend that all affiliates do the same.
Guys I tend to think you are correct about abandoning Party as a partner. They have not been very proactive on the affiliate side of the business for quite some time. I suspect this was because they knew when the changes they had planned were put in place they would most likely lose us.
Now the question at CAP is do we maintain communication with them and turn up the heat in hopes they make a change (I really dont think they are interested in doing that) or do we de-certify them and blacklist them?
If you want me to, I can contact the Partygaming CEO, I have free access to him. He usually works weekends too. Actually, I like him.
I could find out pretty quickly if they are going to try to work something out or if they will stick their head in the sand as usual.
The new poster they have will sound like a broken record until he gets new instructions from the legal department.
Either way, talk first or not, I’m for booting them. We do need to make an example of someone here, or we will be mince meat before long. We can tell them they are suspended until an agreement is reached.
Just to let you know that I have established contact.
I will report tomorrow when I know more – I will soon close down and do dinner etc.
Thinking along the sames lines as Prof about who is to blame here, I think it is both sides of the transaction. If the affiliate obligations never came into the negotiations then the ommission is just as bad as lying. Both parties are experienced enough to know the affiliates should be considered and I’m guessing they both decided not to think about it anymore.
It’s time these programs realised the meaning of ‘for life’ and after all these years you think they would. Then again, perhaps they do and just choose to ignore it. Must admit though, I haven’t read the part of the ‘standard’ T&Cs that attempts to give them a way out when they sell their player list, or merge or are takeover.
As for what to do now. Prof you are in a difficult position but I think you can see what needs to be done. Both Tradal and Party have shown in the past that they are willing to be just a bit greedy at the expense of the affiliate. I’m all for giving people another chance but I think we have all done this with both of them. Time to send the message back to them that,”we don’t need you”, which is pretty much the same message they have been sending to us. Keeping the lines of communication open works up to a point but if we keep getting the same BS then it becomes a waste of time.
