Betvictor - Rogue Affiliate Program

[The Dude]

I received this email last week from Betvictor's "Affiliate Security" - at first I thought they caught someone hacking into my account.

Dear Bryan,

I regret to inform you that after a thorough investigation of your affiliate account and your referred players your account has been closed for being in breach of our terms and conditions in specific:

2.16 Continued Promotion

BetVictor reserve the right to adjust affiliate commissions and/or close accounts that are not continually and actively promoting BetVictor.

BetVictor also reserves the right to close affiliates accounts and withhold initial commissions pertaining to affiliates that have not referred a minimum of one depositing player per calendar month; and/or accounts that are only linked to a single active player.

3.5 Inactive Accounts

BetVictor reserves the right to withhold commission and close any affiliate account deemed to be inactive for a period of 3 months or more. Decisions on inactivity are made at the discretion of the BetVictor Affiliates team but will be influenced by last login date, number of clicks, impressions and referrals.


Full terms and conditions can be seen on the following link:

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions however this decision is final and will not be reversed.

Kind Regards

John
Affiliates Security
Email: affiliates@betvictor.com
www.betvictor.com

Pretty cheeky coming from a casino that failed to maintain it's accreditation agreement:

Previously known as "Victor Chandler Casino", they were listed in our Accredited Section from 2004 until some years later when their casino rep fell off the face of the earth and no one took his place. Subsequently they were removed and they have not shown an interest to have any presence here. Their loss - not mine. They get relatively good reviews in our forum. If they wanted to come back on board, I don't see any issues that would keep them from doing so.

https://www.casinomeister.com/grey-zone-casinos/

So they were listed on the Reservation page because they were too lackadaisical to maintain a casino presence on the forum. Who's fault is that? Not mine, that's for sure.

Here are the terms and conditions that I agreed to in 2004.

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

As you can see, there is nothing about sending at least one player a month. I was probably forced to agree to the new terms at some point when checking my stats. This is a tactic of quite a few affiliate programs - you check your stats, and the affiliate program has changed their terms - and you are forced to agree. There is no heads up or "Say, we need to modify our contract. How does this sound to you...?"

Real partner programs act like a partner: they inform you that they would like to renegotiate terms, and you come to a mutual agreement. What these guys have done is bullshit. This is no different than changing the terms on a bonus player mid-play in a bonus.

This sort of situation is directly addressed in our standards for Accredited Casinos:

Must not implement retroactive terms and conditions to their affiliate programs without explicit permission and agreement from the affiliate.

Link Outdated / Removed

So Betvictor is guilty of this - they won't be looking at accreditation anytime soon. But here is the kicker: did they make an effort to contact me to ask what they could do to get back on the site? No. Did they ask for more traffic? No. Did they make any attempt at all to contact me via email, telephone, or telepathy? No. Have they had the chance to speak with me face to face at the numerous conferences I've attended? Yes, they've been sending their affiliate managers to quite a few of them.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions however this decision is final and will not be reversed.


Then why should I be prompted to ask "any further questions" if the decision is final? Fine, have it your way Betvictor. Off to the rogue pit with ye: Rogue affiliate program - predatory terms, speak to the hand attitude.

 

[ThePOGG]

Thanks for the heads-up CM - they'll be moved to Not Recommended status on ThePOGG.com shortly. This sort of practice is unacceptable.

 

[3jokers]

Thanks for the heads up. I remember back in the days when Victor Chandler was quite a popular site. Had almost forgot about them.

 

[Nicola]

Thanks. These guys have fell well down the ladder since the good old days. Shame.

 

[bonustreak]

Jerks! I am not an affiliate there thankfully!

 

[doolally]

Probably my naivety but does anyone think it's possible that the guys at the top of the tree, ie. Victor himself, would be aware of affiliates getting screwed and the bad rep his business gets because of it?

Not to mention the general loss of business and long-term profit for a short-term gain.

Perhaps a polite phone call or email in the right direction would help with some of these issues with the bigger brands where there is a reputation to uphold and a position to keep/attain in an already saturated marketplace.

....ok, perhaps I'll just turn over and go back to sleep.

 

[KasinoKing]

Old news to me I'm afraid.
In my 9 years as a casino affiliate, Bet Victor are the only program EVER to dump me!

They gave me the boot in November 2011 and "stole" my referred customers, for not bringing in enough new players, even though at the time I had player activity EVERY MONTH which was making them money.

Shockingly bad behaviour from a "high street name" (Though Ladbrokes and William Hills are not far behind... )

KK

 

[JackTenOff]

Thankfully I haven't generated much commission with them but I have dumped them before that happens (and made a note as to why on the top of existing reviews just incase I happen to rank for a betvictor related term )

 

[tomgalanis]

Really sad to see an affiliate program I helped to build have such an appalling fall from grace.

Just an FYI - the business has new (or at least officially new) ownership in the past 18 months or so. Victor is very much in the background. As a traditional sportsbook, affiliates always rode the narrow path between necessary evil and, well, unnecessary evil... Sports betting affiliates provide advice that shortens house margin. This is not really something casino or poker affiliates are capable of doing, so I have never had the same scornful look from CEOs at casino businesses when it came to paying out affiliates as I 'may' have done back at VC.

BetVictor just never quite got the gaming side of it, I'm afraid.

These terms suck at the best of times. Enacting them is quite something else. The minimum player quota is really designed to ensure affiliate accounts aren't used to hedge against sports betting accounts, not to shut good affiliates down.

That all being said, I'll play a little bit of devil's advocate here and explain how the enaction of terms like this has come to pass.

Back in the day (2005), I had a near enough to impossible task of managing the then Victor Chandler affiliate program competing with affiliate programs capable of handling US traffic. That really was an insurmountable selling point we could not offer to get the attention of your .com affiliate. It meant doing CRAZY things like offering no negative carryover, rakeback and then, eventually, higher and higher CPA deals that hammered our margin. UIGEA actually only worsened this - there was essentially a scramble for new English speaking traffic and it was those whose casino product stood out as a business priority that could compete sensibly. We were too busy messing around with poker and trying to get sports to pay.

Affiliate programs like this were 'forced' to do offer the earth to compete for traffic (which still happens today, although I've not seen a ludicrous 100% revenue share deal on offer for a while) will eventually have to balance the books. This is what BetVictor is doing here... they're just doing it all wrong. They're, by no means, the only ones.

 

[The Dude]

For the record, I should mention that they emailed me and told me that the email they sent was sent to me in error. My account is open.

 

[2planks]

These jokers closed my account without explanation or warning. Sent them only a small amount of traffic, would have been more if they had asked, thankfully they didn't as now i see their true colours. Avoid these thieves at all costs people.

 

[dunover]

Funny this subject has reappeared - I don't promote BV but received an e-mail from them via my YT channel asking if I would do a video or live twitch for them if they stood the stakes.....

Same sort of thing I presume as Mr.Yesss!! does for Casumo.