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You’re right Dom.
However, being morally right doesn’t mean being LEGALLY correct.
These limited liability companies that we work with all terminate their responsibilities and liabilities when they cease to exist.
Here’s an example.
My partner was once working for a small company, a reasonable company who had problems with one of the buildings they used. The air conditionaing was always on the fritz and they’d just signed up to a 5-year lease.
Anyway the landlord kept dragging the chain … and the company wanted to move … but had the lease problem.
What did they do?
TRansferred the lease to a newly formed company (with no assets) amusingly called TROPICAL TENANTS … moved out … and then wound up TROPICAL TENANTS.
It took about 3 months and a total of $500 to do. And it was legally all correct. Even though it does not seem right to me …
In this case as Empire cease to be an entity – and the players will no longer make money for Empire … you will be entitled to a lifetime share of ZERO going forward ?
:terms:It does seem screwy to me … Party Poker will be making money from those players at those properties … and so should inherit their liabilities (your contracts) too.
:dozing:But I’ve never been good with legal concepts … every time i try to think about them i end up shaking my head, screwing up my face, and reaching for a stiff drink …
:cuss:Having met with Party at ICE, I was planning on listing them on my sites. As a result of this fiasco, Party will never ever be promoted by me.
I feel for all the Empire Online Affiliates.
Guys, this is only the beginning.
Last time I predicted a big problem I was right. After the second program renegged on the T&C’s we signed under, I warned that if we let it slide it would become the status quo. We let it go, and 5 more programs did the same, including large ones, and it took a lot of head butting and perseverance to get things back to normal.
I am now raising a big fat red flag again. This is a terrible precedent, and number 2 already.
We are heading for a year of consolidations, buy outs and take overs, I am absolutely positive. It is already happening all around us. Some programs are doing this the right way and mapping players over. Look at Casino Rewards and Cooks.
Some are stealing our player bases. Affiliate claims must be considered in the purchase negotiations. They were not in this case. They were not in Partnerpage’s case.
One year from now we could stand here stripped of the player bases we worked so hard to build up all these years. It is what every affiliate needs to make it – building up a player base. It is our security blanket, our only claim to the future.
Not only that, we were promised “life long” player mapping, not until people decide to merge and totally forget to include affiliate claims in their negotiations. Once again, affiliate contracts are nil and void and cannot be trusted.
There will be a lot more mergers, and we have to be smart and look out for ourselves. If we keep sending players to known thieves, we will suffer the same thing over and over. And all the other programs will follow suit since there is nothing negative that happens when you steal player bases.
We need to pay good attention here! This is our future!
Good post, Dominique. I agree 100%.
If we do nothing about this, it will happen again and again.
Remember the retroactive T&Cs fiasco from last year? If we hadn’t taken action then, where do you think we would be today? I suspect a dozen other programs would have rewritten their T&Cs to suit their needs. Commissions would have been lowered to 5%, “lifetime” players would have been stolen — you name it. Thankfully that trainwreck was turned around.
This situation is similar — it sets an important precedent, and it is extremely important that we speak up about this now. If we don’t, we’ll all be screwed in one year. As Party grows, and as they acquire additional properties, you will lose more and more of your “lifetime” players as Party simply puts them into their “house” account.
Is that what you want?
I am going to blacklist PartyPartners because of this. I strongly urge other webmasters who care about this industry to do the same. If we can hurt Party’s bottom line, they won’t be able to buy additional properties. If they can’t buy anyone else, then they can’t steal any more of our lifetime referrals.
Please take some time to help spread the bad news on player forums, on your own blacklists, etc. Trust me, it does work.
Excellent posts on this topic guys, and I am happy to see the issue is coming out in the open.
FYI…I did talk to my AM at Party Poker regarding this topic, and there response on the topic is that they purchased the room (and the players) for $250M as a going concern. They did not purchase the affiliates and do not even have access to the affiliate database. Party indicated that we should be talking to Empire to settle our disputes regarding this matter as our existing affiliate contract is with Tradel/Empire.
Considering that Tradal sent this email…”Our agreement with you in respect of the PartyGaming websites needs to be modified so that from today’s date it will only relate to the websites which we will be retaining rather than PartyGaming’s websites. Technically, this means that our existing affiliate agreement with you is terminated with immediate effect in respect of the PartyGaming websites only and we will need to enter a new agreement with you in exactly the same terms but in relation to NoblePoker.com and ClubDiceCasino.com. “
Basically Tradal’s position is that “Empire Poker” was sold and we should be talking to Party with respect to the existing Empire players and they effectively cancelled the affiliate contract with all affilites by giving the necessary written notice.
A similar situation happened when Noble was puchased by Tradal from Casino Partners, we had to contact Tradel to move our existing Noble players..as this was not an automatic process. In this instance, our Noble players were transferred and we changed our trackers over to Tradal for future Noble players.
We fortunately do not have a large base of Empire players, probably because we were hesitant to promote the room because of this exact risk, and Party warning us for the last 1.5 years not to promote Empire.
I do feel for those affiliates who are getting caught in a contractual loophole here as we believe that a contract is a contract and existing players on % of rake deals with lifetime commissions should be honored. Considering that the affiliate spent the marketing dollars to acquire the players this should be the case for sure. It is unfortunate that the affiliate agreements are heavily one-sided in favour of the rooms.
I did indicate to our AM at Party that the affiliate community would be extremely negative to this position, their stance is that we should be going after the seller who reaped the reward of the $250M purchase if we want to settle our disputes with existing player relationships.
I find this similar to the conversations I had with CasinoPartners at CAC when they were bragging about the Noble sale, and I indicated at that time the sale was incomplete because the affiliates were not taken care of and the only ones who benefited were the seller.
I do agree with Dominique that the market is ripe for consolidation, and this situation will occur again when the player base from the smaller rooms are acquired by the larger players. I have heard rumours that Poker Stars is on the block as an example. Imagine if you have large player bases for rooms such as Full Tilt, Ultimate Bet, Titan, Bodog, Doyles Room, Paradise, Pacfic, Poker Room, Royal Club, etc. etc. and this happened again and again. The large room acquires the base of players and effectively says we did not acquire the affiliates, your deal was with the existing room – sorry but all existing players are our property, go deal with the seller to settle your existing contracts.
This will happen again – and if the affiliate community is worried about their current revenue streams, I strongly suggest that we take a stance on this matter.
The culprit is both parties.
Tradal didn’t own the players it sold, it only owned a percentage of the income they generated. The other percentage is owned by affiliates. The affiliates should have been reimbursed.
Tradal sold something they did not own, and Party knowingly bought something that was stolen.
The entire deal was very hostile and all we are going to get is them pointing fingers at each other.
Both parties have shown total disregard for affiliates by closing such a deal, and both parties are to be blamed.
We absolutely cannot sit still and let this be a precedent.
And what is this thing with the casino players? Why are they not being mapped over? There is absolutely no excuse for that!
I am for suspending Party from CAP until they come up with a settlement.
I also agree with Engineer and if we all blacklisted Party and Tradal and spread the word throughout forums, affiliate, poker and general player, perhaps the two companies will realize that screwing affiliates does not pay off.
Where were they last year during the T&C standoff? Asleep? Did they learn nothing?
It won’t be long and searches for any Party properties will turn up this mess instead of affiliate referrals.
Affiliates are an international community of smart entrepreneurs. It’s not smart to steal from our members, regardless of how big a company you have become. Don’t forget who helped put you where you are – we can undo this also.
Dear Affiliates
We have no intention of shortchanging our affiliate relationships. We are putting down our position in a systematic manner here to try and address affiliate concerns.
•Empire Online Ltd. (EOL) had a contractual relationship with PartyGaming, which entitled Empire Online Limited (EOL) to a share of the revenues generated by players who played on the PartyGaming system via Empirepoker.com and/or Aceclub.com.
•When PartyGaming agreed to acquire the assets of Empirepoker.com and Aceclub.com from EOL, we agreed to terminate that contractual relationship between PartyGaming and EOL.
•Anyone who was an affiliate of EOL or one of its companies and who sent players to Empirepoker.com and/or Aceclub.com had a contractual relationship with EOL and not with PartyGaming or any of its companies, to be paid by EOL for such players on whichever terms were agreed upon by EOL and the affiliate. PartyGaming is not a party to such agreements nor is privy to them.
•PartyGaming paid for the player revenues from 14 February onwards as part of the overall consideration of $250M. It would not be fair or appropriate for PartyGaming to be compelled to pay additional money to Empire affiliates for obligations owed by EOL or it would effectively be paying twice for acquiring the same players. Therefore, EOL and PartyGaming agreed that EOL would remain liable for its obligations to its affiliates.
•The outcome is that if any affiliate of EOL is owed any money up to the date EOL terminated its contractual relationship with it, it must look to EOL to meet that liability. It cannot look to PartyGaming. We are providing the necessary information to EOL to enable them to calculate those liabilities and we have no reason to believe that they will not meet their liabilities to their affiliates.
•To continue as an affiliate for empirepoker.com or aceclub.com from 15 February 2006 onwards, you will need to enter into a new agreement with PartyGaming. You can do this by contacting your existing Affiliate Manager at PartyPartners or write to us at [email protected], we will be happy to set this up for you.
Affiliate Team
Party Partners
So basically you mutually agreed to cut out the affiliate in your negotiations. I am recommending that no one going forward does business with tradal or party partners.
I am taking off to south africa for 3 weeks, upon my return I am removing all remaining links going to these properties.
antoine wrote:So basically you mutually agreed to cut out the affiliate in your negotiations. I am recommending that no one going forward does business with tradal or party partners.I agree. That is what happened, and that is what we must do.
Next update, Tradal and Party are coming off my sites, and I will add them to my blacklist (#3 in google) and explain why, and I will do the same in my 14,000 member newsletter!
I may even add a special page to gamesandcasino with SEO for Party and Tradal outlining the utter disregard for affiliates demonstrated by these two companies. I will most certainly blog about this in my webmaster section.
I will also start posting in other forums where affiliates, players and investors can see what is happening here.
Party and Tradal may think that they are above the law because we are not able to sue and therefor we can be ignored and our property can be sold and bought without reimbursing us.
We have much power. We know the internet and the search engines better than anyone. All we want is to be treated fairly, and we will slave away for free until programs realize a profit. Only then do they need to pay us.
We don’t take kindly to being cheated out of earnings.
Casino Rewards recently aquired another casino group, and they mapped the players over to us.
They did the right thing. They have several pokers and a lot of casinos. I will map all my party and Tradal space over to Casino Rewards.
I will thank those who do the right thing and speak up about those who don’t.
Partygaming buy up a skin and duck the affs? This is not as clean cut as Party would like to make out, because effectively they were the software supplier.
Empire was doing fine. Party locked off the players. Party thereby reduce viability of EO skin. Party buy the skin for cheap. Party don’t migrate the aff accounts either.
Someone is having a party for sure. I don’t think the affs are invited.
I still do not think that PartyGaming is at fault here. If you guys want to blame anyone, it should be Empire Online. They sold their business to PartyGaming for $250,000,000. How much of that money is going to their pocket and how much of that is going to their ex-empirepoker affiliates? They are pocketing the entire lump sum without any of it going to the affiliates who helped make empire poker a success. It would have been nice if they gave X amount of dollars per player referred on MGR to their former affiliates. I think everyone would be happy with that.
Note: I have over 300+ RMP’s with EmpirePoker. So I am taking a fairly big hit.
Dominique wrote:Party bought empire including everything, all the records, everything.In the real world, you may well get fired after a company take over, but you do have rights to settlements in that case.
It’s theft, and I doubt that Party will do the right thing. They didn’t even map over the casino players from casinos they owned all along.
This is not just a bad way to act for Party in specific, with all the consolidation now and in the near future, it sets a very troublesome precedent for us. The industry is contracting and consolidating left and right, and this time next year there will be a much smaller number of programs around. Will we all be out of everything we have worked for all these years then?
It would be easy enough for Party to map the players over, like Casino Rewards mapped Captain Cook’s players over.
I bet Wager Junction will map the players of the 5 casinos they just bought over for us.
Some places care about affiliates, and some just don’t give a hoot. Party has forgotten who made them. Same for Casino Pays, the Partnerpage players were not mapped over.
Shame, shame! :banger:
I feel the same as Dominique, nothing like being used and abused by these shaddy and often corrupt people. I would toss them all out and let them go to their own Marketing. The seem to be doing a good job of that anyway. greek39
joeyl wrote:Partygaming buy up a skin and duck the affs? This is not as clean cut as Party would like to make out, because effectively they were the software supplier.Empire was doing fine. Party locked off the players. Party thereby reduce viability of EO skin. Party buy the skin for cheap. Party don’t migrate the aff accounts either.
Someone is having a party for sure. I don’t think the affs are invited.
Thats exactly how it happened, Joeyl.
Party plays dirty all along, and they don’t mind messing with their own affiliates. I bet the very large ones are receiving some compensation to stay quiet, as happened with Sporting Bet. Those two outfits should merge, they have the same spirit.
I have to admit that I’m baffled thay anyone is surprised by Party’s actions, in regards to this issue. This is the same company that knee-capped its own licensees by decoupling the shared player base in a premeditated move to then buy those same distressed properties later for pennies on the dollar.
It doesn’t excuse their actions, as far as cutting affiliates off from the Empire player base they spent years to build up, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone. If they’re willing to blatantly screw their own licensees, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’ll bend over affiliates, as well. As far as costs to cut, now that they’ve gotten the skins out of the way, affiliates are next.
Scan through the PartyGaming threads here. It should take you about thirty seconds to realize that PartyGaming would absolutely love to sever all affiliate ties (except for maybe a few super affiliates) entirely, now that they’ve reached critical mass. It’s no coincidence that affiliates are having so many issues with frozen accounts, complete and utter lack of response from account managers, missing stats, missing payments, and stolen player bases.
I can’t help but think that it’s best to just move on at this point, and completely write off any revenues from Party/Empire/whatever skin. The writing has been on the wall for awhile, for the vast majority of Party affiliates. There are plenty of good programs out there that actually care about maintaining and developing relationships with affiliates, and are committed to honoring contracts and agreements.
If anyone owes you anything it’s Empire. Your contract was through them. If they didnt insist that players be transfered(or affiliates be compensated) when the takeover took place, so be it. Empire obviously wasn’t looking out for its affiliates. This is going to become common place in the future. This is one of the main reasons programs are doing away with their CPA programs. As the smaller sites get bought out you’ll lose players from there. It sucks, but what can be done about it? Really?
