GP, MGS, and affiliates

[Casinomeister]

re. Grand Prive: I have located a record of my actual stats on an old computer but haven't had a chance yet to hook it up long enough to pull all the data. It will show without a doubt that the figures given to eCOGRA were selective and legacy players were excluded.

Grand Prive owes me at least 10 times what they propose to pay.

I also have located the previous aff managers who should be able to give information about the missing data.

Sorry I don't have all this ready yet, too much has been going on (such as ddos attacks and the resulting introduction of additional security).

MGS made it clear that the migration between Referspot and Grand Prive's affiliate program did in fact occur. MGS`'s role was to ensure that the software functioned properly - which it did.

My question is - if the migration of players from one program to the other was flawed, why didn't affiliates notice it back then? That doesn't make any sense.

As far as I know, the GP aff program ran for some time before they closed it. Why didn't affiliates complain that the players weren't migrated back in 2007-08?

Is a well known fact in this industry that the lifespan of a player is 3-5 months - bonus beaters about 3-5 days . If you haven't promoted this casino group for three years or so, what is to be expected? This casino group was in various rogue/blacklists for some time. How many of your players would you expect to still be playing there? Do you expect your players to remain loyal to a casino you blacklist? Just some things to kick around...

 

[AussieDave]

Some good points & food for thought too.

What I don't get and NO one can answer it or don't want to answer it...
But leading up to the eCOGRA investigation it was purported that 100's if not 1000's of affiliates had their livelihoods affected by GP.

However only 75 (or so) affiliates submitted claim forms. Unless most of the 100's (1000's) of affiliates were living under a rock when all this was going on, I don't understand why more affiliates (even a couple 100) didn't submit claim forms...

Things like that just don't add up...


Cheers



Dave

 

[spearmaster]

MGS made it clear that the migration between Referspot and Grand Prive's affiliate program did in fact occur. MGS`'s role was to ensure that the software functioned properly - which it did.

My question is - if the migration of players from one program to the other was flawed, why didn't affiliates notice it back then? That doesn't make any sense.

As far as I know, the GP aff program ran for some time before they closed it. Why didn't affiliates complain that the players weren't migrated back in 2007-08?

No one has said that it did NOT function properly when GP still had an affiliate program.

The problem is that we do not know how the integration was done - whether or not a separate script had to be run on a monthly basis to pull in the data from those legacy Referspot players (and presumably not run since the GP affiliate program was shut down).

Simply mapping the players over does not ensure that the correct data is automatically being pulled by the new software. It just means that the basic information has been moved over (ie. name, address, birth date, account number etc.) - it doesn't necessarily mean that gaming data is automatically pulled by the new system WITHOUT help from the old one.

What I want to know is exactly HOW the integration took place and what measures were necessary AFTER the integration in order to make sure that legacy players' gaming data was being updated?

Is a well known fact in this industry that the lifespan of a player is 3-5 months - bonus beaters about 3-5 days . If you haven't promoted this casino group for three years or so, what is to be expected? This casino group was in various rogue/blacklists for some time. How many of your players would you expect to still be playing there? Do you expect your players to remain loyal to a casino you blacklist? Just some things to kick around...

Completely irrelevant - are you SURE that all players quit after 5 months? You do remember that perhaps 5% of players actually visit forums - and thus would've seen blacklists? Do you think that everyone that ever downloaded a casino from a Casinomeister link comes back to read CM regularly? If a player was being treated fairly by a casino, why should he/she leave if the marketer is suddenly not happy with them?

This presumption of lifespan of players needs to be thrown straight into the bin. It has no bearing whatsoever on real player activity. It has the same amount of weight as an "average CPA value" across the board for all players and all affiliates - absolutely ZILCH.

 

[vinylweatherman]

The people best placed to answer the player lifespan question are the affiliates themselves. Many are interested in this fiasco, so they could do their own stats on this from their own record, and pool the data to find out the lifetimes of their players.

I know for a fact that my lifespan at quite a few casinos can be measured in YEARS, and a factor in this is whether loyalty is valued, and service is reasonable. Dropping me like a hot potato from receiving what are billed as "regular loyalty offers" is what makes me stop playing and uninstall. Often though, casinos learn from this, and entice me back by paying more attention to me. It is VERY unusual for me to go so far as close an account, so in my case inactivity would be measured by whether I have played in the past few months. It does NOT mean I will never return.

Grand Prive in this case has sought to narrow the remit of this investigation so matters such as this are NOT looked at, and have supposedly wiped old data from the systems. Affiliates who kept their old data can check it to see what happened when the program closed, and extrapolate it into the year when compensation values were calculated from new data. What should NOT be seen is the "fell off a cliff" scenario, since PLAYERS were not aware this dispute was going on, and were receiving the same level of service from GP as always. Players would NOT have suddenly fled on Dec 1st, it would have been a gradual process of reduction, as old players stopped playing, and no new ones took their place. There will have been some legacy players that remained loyal for YEARS, and it is most of all these that should NOT have suddenly quit on Dec 1st. Old Referspot players who remained active for years should be looked for in the old records, and then their activity extrapolated into the 2009 period. Only when widespread blacklisting of GP occurred would this have caused SOME players to reconsider their loyalty, whatever GP was offering them.

 

[dominique]

MGS made it clear that the migration between Referspot and Grand Prive's affiliate program did in fact occur. MGS`'s role was to ensure that the software functioned properly - which it did.

My question is - if the migration of players from one program to the other was flawed, why didn't affiliates notice it back then? That doesn't make any sense.

As far as I know, the GP aff program ran for some time before they closed it. Why didn't affiliates complain that the players weren't migrated back in 2007-08?

Is a well known fact in this industry that the lifespan of a player is 3-5 months - bonus beaters about 3-5 days . If you haven't promoted this casino group for three years or so, what is to be expected? This casino group was in various rogue/blacklists for some time. How many of your players would you expect to still be playing there? Do you expect your players to remain loyal to a casino you blacklist? Just some things to kick around...

I don't expect players to stop playing at a casino they have played at for YEARS because I blacklist the operator over an aff issue. Maybe a player issue, but not an aff issue. The reason I sent players to Referspot in the first place is because they did have exceptional retention and many players played there for years. That makes me assume they were happy. And that makes me send more players. And that makes it very unlikely that ALL of them, including in the cases of several affs I spoke to, quit at the same time. Not gonna happen over an aff issue. New players may be leery of going there, but someone who has found pleasure in playing there for years isn't gonna quit, in tandem with likely hundreds, overnight, because affs scream foul play. Besides, why would they even think to search for "Grand Prive" on google and see the blacklistings? They needed no info, they were playing there for years.

Many of my players play loyally at the same casinos for years, they may have a list of them they hop between, but they do tend to continue to go where they are treated well.

The transfer of players was anything but troublefree, took months longer than promised, and caused long (now archived) threads at CAP. Some affiliates swear their players were never transferred in the first place.

The transfer, according to comments by the affiliate managers at the time on CAP, was handled by MGS, and it was put on an MGS platform.

When the transfer was complete, there was a "quickstats" section on the first page after login. It displayed Referspot players and Grand Prive players SEPERATELY. You knew exactly which players came from the Referspot legacy, and which didn't. For me, as well as the other affs I spoke to, the compensation offer fit the Grand prive stats, but did NOT include the Referspot legacy. In my case, that means I am owed over ten times what I was offered. The others have similair discrepancies.

The closure of Grand Prive Affiliates happened after MGS decided to withdraw from the US market, and hence affiliates who had previously been prolific now sent few if any players.

These affiliates became a monkey on Grand Prive's back, still needing to be paid according to contract, for as long as the players continued to play there.

Affiliates only get paid by performance - if they make money for the casino they get paid, if they don't, they don't. I really don't see why Grand Prive should be able to continue to profit from our services through this day and into the future without paying as contractually agreed. They are continuing to benefit from our work without having to pay for it. And it causes a lot of ill will among affiliates.

I automatically trusted any program with MGS software - not anymore. That is the worst result of all of this - not that I am out of money, but that I cannot trust contracts in this industry anymore. Nothing keeps anyone from doing with impunity what Grand Prive did. And even with scrutiny from both eCOGRA and MGS, they are succeeding in exactly what they set out to do: Get rid of the monkey on their back. Get rid of the now useless affiliates who are still eligible collect payment for their past services, as long as Grand Prive profits from them.

With the deletion of the aff site - who is to prove anything? Is there a copy rattling around someplace at MGS? Are the people who worked on this transfer still there? Don't they remember the approximate volume? The way the data was fed into the system?

I think if MGS truly wanted the truth, they could find it.

 

[Dave]

My question is - if the migration of players from one program to the other was flawed, why didn't affiliates notice it back then? That doesn't make any sense.

As far as I know, the GP aff program ran for some time before they closed it. Why didn't affiliates complain that the players weren't migrated back in 2007-08?

Gene from casinocrush posted quite a bit about this at the time. The threads are in the password protected area of CAP now, but if you view the Google page below, you can sort of see what the threads were about.

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

Regarding player lifespan -- dozens of the players I've referred have been playing for years.

 

[dominique]

The transfer itself was issue #1, some affiliates DID lose players then.

Now we are talking about issue #2 - the magical disappearance of active players that WERE transferred correctly.

Should MGS want copies of the CAP threads pertaining to these issues, please contact me.

 

[bonustreak]

There should be several threads on CAP back when this merge happend back in the day I know that myself, Casino Crush and a few others were ripping them apart back then. There is even thread where at the time the casino manager was Iwin I believe who bluntly told me ..well yes this new 1 player login across all the casino sites is cross marketing.. cross marketing is after all standard industry practice! Many times Referspot/GP was called out by myself for shady things and that was when I said we are not going to promote this brand anymore and just earn off the residual income.

 

[AussieDave]

At the GPWA they avoid my question and here now too

 

[spearmaster]

Interesting post by giggles at gpwa:

What i don't understand is back when i was still earning with GP my stats where always split....Grand Prive stats and Legacy stats...now if they still have the GP stats and info, why don't they have the Referspot stats and info...they were both included in our accounts all the way up to the end when they shut down GP......so it makes no sense for them to say they lost, deleted, etc...referspot stats .....?????

Can someone explain to me how they can still have one but not the other..?

Now we're getting somewhere. How is it that there are "legacy" stats and "GP stats"?

This is a very strong signal that there was NOT a complete integration done here.

 

[Casinomeister]

...Completely irrelevant - are you SURE that all players quit after 5 months? You do remember that perhaps 5% of players actually visit forums - and thus would've seen blacklists? Do you think that everyone that ever downloaded a casino from a Casinomeister link comes back to read CM regularly? If a player was being treated fairly by a casino, why should he/she leave if the marketer is suddenly not happy with them?

It's not irrelevant. Everyone here is speculating - I should be allowed some room to speculate myself.

5%?? You know that's not true - eCOGRA conducted a survey in 2007 that found that 40% of players use message boards. I would speculate that this is higher now three years later.

This presumption of lifespan of players needs to be thrown straight into the bin. It has no bearing whatsoever on real player activity. It has the same amount of weight as an "average CPA value" across the board for all players and all affiliates - absolutely ZILCH.

So - let me get this straight. Affiliates can speculate on the 100s if not 1000s of affiliates owed buckets full of money because they think the are owed something, but I'm not given the opportunity to suggest that the life of the player may have had an effect of their profits. C'mon, be real. Ask any operator (besides GP) on how long their players hang around - on average.

Hell, when I was playing a lot. I only played at the casinos my buddies promoted so I could pound them back to the stone age, remember?
(feel free to chime in any time Simmo! )

Back to the issues. I'm trying my best to understand where the affiliates are coming from, but some things just don't jive.

@ aggrieved affiliates - if you thought that your business was being affected by irregular stats/mishandled migration that happened over two years ago,why did you continue to support and promote these guys? I just can't wrap my head around this.

If this was the case, why didn't ANYONE take them to task on this i.e. hire a lawyer and challenge them? The way it looks to me - and this is strictly an observance - is that the GP affiliates were satisfied with their stats up until GP closed their main affiliate program.

 

[Webzcas]

Like Aussie Dave and also others, I would like to know why only 75 affiliates filed a claim with eCOGRA? However, I also am of the view that if a proper and full audit was carried out, no claims should have needed to be filed.

If eCOGRA were provided with the full data, then they should have quite easily been able to run a report to calculate ALL affiliate accounts and the payments made to them to date.

This is something that MGS would be able to easily assist them with, by writing the script required to query the player database. MGS wrote scripts for us at Ladbrokes all the time, depending on what information we wanted to extract from the database.

Why were affiliates expected to file a claim, when it was not the affiliates doing in closing down the affiliate program? The onus should have been on eCOGRA to get this information. The fact that claims had to be filed, thus further reduces GP's financial exposure - as there would have been some affiliates unaware of the eCOGRA audit.

I have to disagree with you Bryan on your assessement of the average lifetime of a player. Whilst on average you are correct, but there are exceptions to the rule. I have checked the stats of the programs I promote, and I still have some players who I referred as far back as 2005 still playing to this day. I would also bet that affiliates like BonusStreak who eCOGRA deemed was only due $7 ( seven bucks! ) after their audit was complete, has players still playing who she referred as far back as then. I am also guessing in terms of revenue Bonustreak is a larger affiliate than I am.

Also I have heard the total amount due after this audit was $63k across all accounts who filed claims. This seems very low to me. I can guarantee there are many affiliates who earned more than this from one program alone in the last year. Without going into details, one of the programs I promote generated more than this amount in 2009 - and I do not heavily promote them.

This says to me that the majority of affiliates were paid out some form of compensation when the GP Affiliate Program closed, hence they have not been vocal on the forums - it is very noticable who has not been vocal on the affiliate forums compared to the few who have. But I am still of the view that the audit was flawed and eCOGRA were not given access to the entire data required.

Lots of questions and my own observations only - Bear in mind I have no horse in this race as I have never promoted Grand Prive.

 

[spearmaster]

5%?? You know that's not true - eCOGRA conducted a survey in 2007 that found that 40% of players use message boards. I would speculate that this is higher now three years later.

And just how impartial do you think eCOGRA's survey is? I don't mean that they did anything untoward - but that the people they surveyed probably got there from a forum in the first place?

I would speculate that your speculation is nothing more than that.

So - let me get this straight. Affiliates can speculate on the 100s if not 1000s of affiliates owed buckets full of money because they think the are owed something, but I'm not given the opportunity to suggest that the life of the player may have had an effect of their profits. C'mon, be real. Ask any operator (besides GP) on how long their players hang around - on average.

No one disputes the average lifetime of a player, for crying out loud. But that cannot be used as a measuring stick - at site A maybe players last 1 day, but at site B, players have been around for years. How do you apply an industry average to that?

eCOGRA tried to suggest that there was an average value per player that should be paid across the board - and I told them that they could not do this because each site has a different player profile. Using the example above, site A's players might be worth about $10 CPA while site B's players might be worth $1000.

You *cannot* apply an average value or lifetime when you are dealing with *individual* affiliates. Period.

@ aggrieved affiliates - if you thought that your business was being affected by irregular stats/mishandled migration that happened over two years ago,why did you continue to support and promote these guys? I just can't wrap my head around this.

*sigh*

The problem only arose AFTER GP CLOSED DOWN. What is so hard to understand about that? Why do you think I'm asking for details of how the migration worked?

Honestly - take a deep breath and STEP BACK - and then look at it again without any bias.

If this was the case, why didn't ANYONE take them to task on this i.e. hire a lawyer and challenge them? The way it looks to me - and this is strictly an observance - is that the GP affiliates were satisfied with their stats up until GP closed their main affiliate program.

DOH!

Because they WORKED CORRECTLY until GP was shut down and STOPPED importing legacy Referspot data!!!

 

[Casinomeister]

DOH!

Because they WORKED CORRECTLY until GP was shut down and STOPPED importing legacy Referspot data!!!

Ahh, you finally made sense (to me)

Going back to the eCOGRA survey. The survey was done at the casino level with the casino players. It was not set up from here or any other forums. But that's another topic entirely.

 

[spearmaster]

Ahh, you finally made sense (to me)

YAY! Hallelujah...

 

[dominique]

@ aggrieved affiliates - if you thought that your business was being affected by irregular stats/mishandled migration that happened over two years ago,why did you continue to support and promote these guys? I just can't wrap my head around this.

If this was the case, why didn't ANYONE take them to task on this i.e. hire a lawyer and challenge them? The way it looks to me - and this is strictly an observance - is that the GP affiliates were satisfied with their stats up until GP closed their main affiliate program.

Like I said before, you are melding 2 seperate issues that occurred years apart.

1. the migration

SOME affiliates claim that their players were never migrated. Other affiliates say their players were migrated properly. So I assume there were some glitches in the migration, and it was otherwise successful.


2. the eCOGRA audit

ALL vocal affiliates say that their legacy players were not taken into consideration.

The original migration is mute now, it's been years and it had a LOT of glitches in the process, took much longer than anticipated, and some people fell through the cracks. I don't think there was intent on MGS part to omit data during the migration. Grand Prive did NOT handle the migration itself.

The issue now is the eCOGRA audit, which did not account for any of the previously successfully migrated data (and obviously couldn't account for data that were never originally migrated).

Re Aussiedave's question: Who knows? Affiliates don't all show up at the same office everyday, they are independent and only a small percentage visits message boards. Email addresses change over the years, most of the claims were likely too small to bother (in the eye of the beholder) and whatnot. Also, Grand Prive is said to have taken affiliates that were still productive after the move from the US with them to the (3rd) new aff program, for Fortuna.

Meister and CAP announced the need to submit a claim, GPWA filed a claim on behalf of all it's members. It would have been more fair to just calculate ALL owed monies and then attempt to contact all affected parties.

In brick and mortar issues of similair nature, lawyers would have been given complete lists of aggrieved parties and the lawyers would have contacted the individuals on that list. In this case, supposedly emails were sent to all possibly concerned affiliates by - not sure by whom. AGD had offered to assist in the whole process as an impartial observer - and if that had been accepted, there would not be these kinds of doubts. If AGD had assisted, the missing data would also have been discovered before eCOGRA announced the incorrect results, saving them a lot of grief.

 

[bonustreak]

@ aggrieved affiliates - if you thought that your business was being affected by irregular stats/mishandled migration that happened over two years ago,why did you continue to support and promote these guys? I just can't wrap my head around this.

We said the same thing back in 07 when the management started calling our good depositing players bonus abusers, this after the casino would send them bonus offer after bonus offer and gawd forbid if they player accepted that offer and happen to win! Then players were waiting for weeks for cash outs while management was being moved around etc. Referspot was our biggest sponsor back in the day and we were earning thousands but guess what we put our forum members first and decided to do the right thing and drop them as a sponsor and stand up for the players! There are many that can vouch for this fact and for the fact that many other forum owners continued to support Referspot and send players to them KNOWING players were being treated like chit!

We can be thankful that we are not one of the affiliates thinking we were screwed out of thousands of dollars, because that happened to us years ago and I am well over it by now and moved on...

 

[Casinomeister]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not confusing anything here. I'm just trying to understand exactly what the affiliates are claiming.

You claim that in your affiliate account there were two sets of data - one set of data for the new players, another for the old players. You feel that when eCOGRA did their audit the old data was disregarded/not included.

But if the players were truly mapped over, then this was the data you were looking at. How could this data not be included? Do you feel this was kept in a separate database?

I'm in the process of gathering more information. Hopefully I'll have more at the end of the weekend/beginning of next week.

BTW - I still stand by my claim about the average lifespan of a player - and I said average, not all - it's only a few months. This can be confirmed with most operators out there.

 

[bonustreak]

I agree about the average life span of a player. I also think if the casino is good at retention they player is going to stay around longer.

 

[spearmaster]

BTW - I still stand by my claim about the average lifespan of a player - and I said average, not all - it's only a few months. This can be confirmed with most operators out there.

I repeat myself again.

No one is arguing about the average lifespan of a player. No one has disputed this at any time.

However, you *still* cannot use this average to justify the low returns that some affiliates received after the audit.

 

[Casinomeister]

...

However, you *still* cannot use this average to justify the low returns that some affiliates received after the audit.

Maybe they had lots of winners

 

[RobWin]

Maybe they had lots of winners

Let me grab you for just a minute bro...

https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/meeting-with-microgaming-what-do-players-want.36887/

Thanks...
____
____

 

[spearmaster]

Maybe they had lots of winners

And maybe they lost lots of players.

I know which horse I'm backing.

 

[dominique]

The average lifespan of a player can vary WIDELY from affiliate to affiliate.

It depends on the type of promotions carried (for example, free chips versus staggered loyalty deposit bonuses) etc. It depends on the demographics of the site in general and the type of player that is attracted by the specific offers. Often lowrollers prefer one type of site, high rollers another. Different age groups, genders and income brackets respond to different sites and offers. Marketing principles apply not only in the brick and mortar world, they apply online too. Usually affiliates who send more players also send players with a lower life expectancy, while affiliates who send players with a high life expectancy send less volume. It also depends on the quality of the promoted casinos in specific, mistreated players leave and go elsewhere, happy players may well stay on for years.

I said earlier, Referspot had very good retention, and this was continued by Grand Prive. Bonus issues affect some types of players, but not others. Affiliates ideally try to make sure the correct casino is matched to each player.

Applying an average is totally unfair. This needs to be calculated seperately for every affiliate, and not by combining everyone in the world wide web. Each case will look very different.

This can send me into a diatribe about how affiliate programs are managed, but I won't sidetrack this thread.

 

[dominique]

All of that aside, if eCOGRA and MGS could find the time and energy to compare notes, the discrepancies would become obvious.