@Casinomeister I will forever be grateful for the work you done in the early years of online casinos whether you hate me or not. There was a time when becoming an accredited casino actually meant something and every casino wanted to earn your respect and do business with you. I have nothing but good things to say about you from those early years and you deserve all the praise you get.
I called you a dinosaur because it is no longer the noughties and it took businesses maybe 6-12 months to swallow their pride and accept just how much traffic a social media presence can bring to their own website. You chose not to use it and therefore it is perfectly reasonable for someone to reflect on the impact that decision has had 15 years later. It was clearly the wrong decision and your YouTube channel is a good example of that.
You were around for the birth of YouTube, but you treated it like a hobby rather than a valuable business tool that would spread your brand all around the world. In the days before streaming, you were in a position were you could have dominated the search results for gambling related terms and had full creative freedom.
One obvious example for content would have been a monthly talk show were you interviewed key people from inside the industry. With your contacts, there would be no end to guests wanting to come on your show to tell the world what a great casino they are. This would give you an opportunity to grill them a little and show you’re a man who cares about the player and takes no shit. Today you would be a recognised face with tens of millions of views across your channel.
Another example is your PAB service. It is a goldmine of entertainment that just needs converted into the proper medium. Each PAB case could have had its own professionally produced video were you lay out the argument from both player and casino and allow for a debate. Casinos would now need to come on your show to defend themselves and what could be more entertaining than having the player there also to tell their side of the story. As the 3rd party in the debate you could share your own insight and another opportunity to show that you are a true fair play advocate who takes no shit from any online casino.
But you chose to do none of that and as a result the Casinomeister brand has effectively been on lockdown and contained in-house. Outside these walls of Casinomeister, you are an unknown person and therefore have not earned creditability. And I’m sure you are a nice guy, in fact I know you’re a nice guy, but how would a person that stumbles across your website know any of this? People want to see a face and personality. Why are they not right to suspect it is just another generic online casino affiliate that claims to be this and that? Do casinos even still display their awards? I don’t remember the last time I saw one do so if they are there, they must be in the attic gathering dust and out of view.
If you are going to act as judge and jury and publicly convict a major affiliate rival of fraud, then you have to accept that will draw attention to how you conduct business yourself.
If you really are a fair play advocate, then why do you openly allow the casinos to break the very rules of accreditation you created yourself? It seems you are indeed totally fine with casinos breaking terms after all. Of course the difference here is that you would suffer a great financial loss if you were to remove all those casinos and forfeit all future income. Obviously you can’t accept income from a casino that you now deem unfit for accreditation otherwise you lose your credibility.
The fact is, ever since gambling became regulated you’ve lost your power and Casinomeister is becoming obsolete. The world has changed a lot since 1998 and casinos are now on their best behaviour by default. They are so worried about breaking the law that many players now struggle to even willingly hand over their money. The casino demands proof that they are gambling responsibly and of course the best way to do that is ask for bank statements showing a players day-to-day financial activity. When the player looks at their bank statement they are confronted with reality and quickly realise this is damming evidence of irresponsible gambling and they simply leave and find another licensed and regulated casino.
In a world such as this, why does it even matter what Casinomeister believes to be a good or bad casino? They are now properly licensed and regulated businesses yet you list many of them in your grey zone because they refused to partake in your baptism of fire ritual or for some other reason. That doesn’t make them a dishonest company that deserves a warning, it simply says they don’t have time for this shit. More importantly, why are you affiliated with these casinos at all if they do not meet the standards of accreditation? The link in your review is an affiliate one so it seems you are perfectly fine with players signing up to these casinos and making an income from their losses. So again, where is your credibility as a fair play advocate?
Casinomeister in 2020 feels like a billboard for casinos to advertise on. An extremely outdated Initiation process which requires no more than ticking a few boxes and no casino stands a realistic chance of failing. Every casino gets a walk to the billboard were they slap their name on it and now the casino has the official Casinomeister seal of approval. For the rep it’s job done and they fuck off back to their regular duties.
So what is so special about being an accredited casino on Casinomeister? You have no legal power so to me it feels like nothing more than an illusion to give customers the belief that they are somehow better protected if they sign up through your site. A PAB service which could be seen as trying to steer people away from the proper channels laid out to handle such disputes.
Just like the gambling industry, the regulations around social media are stronger than ever and businesses are terrified to even acknowledge the existence of a competitor. Roshtein has never been convicted of a crime yet you created a fucking award calling him a fraud. These are not the actions of a man who is in touch with the modern business world. You could have lost everything you spent the last 2 decades building and been made bankrupt.
You are definitely right that Casinomeister’s forum classes it as a social media platform. You are therefore bound by the same regulations as Facebook, Twitter and all the rest. You simply can not behave as you did and I feel you’ve got lucky here and slipped under the radar of the one too many people that would snap at the opportunity for a pro bono defamation case.
And what a headline it would be that a business which once stood to protect players from the scummy competitive behaviour of online casinos, lost its power, struggled to compete and ultimately lost everything when it resorted to the very behaviour it once stood against. It would certainly send a strong message to all other affiliates that this continuous pursuit to find a final solution to the Roshtein problem will no longer be tolerated.
You should have sold this site the moment you got wind of gambling becoming regulated and enjoyed a happy retirement free from all the stresses of being an online casino affiliate. Without the power you once had, Casinomeister.com is simply resting on its laurels from the good ole days and it seems you are prepared to go down with the ship rather than take on board constructive criticism and force change.
You will certainly not find constructive criticism from the members of this forum or the friends you employ. They all love and praise you and that’s the problem. It makes perfect sense that it would come from an outside source and you are fully within your right to ignore and ban me from your forum. But just maybe there is a lot of sense in what I’m saying and you should take heed of those warnings.
I’ve said everything I need to and I honestly wish you all the best in the future.