Terms and Condition Changes - Brightshare (I Sense Something)

The BrightShare program has always been, and will remain, trusted, fair and committed to positive long term business relationships. Our tagline reflects what we believe in – Playing Fair, Sharing success.

The markets around us have changed dramatically in the past few years. We have not changed the essence of the program and the core of our business terms for more than 8 years and we therefore decided to revisit and update the program.

We have a deep obligation to share our success and profits with our affiliate partners. This must be done in a way that is attractive both for our partners, and to the casinos we represent, in order to create a Win-Win situation, in which all parties benefit.

We have checked ourselves against other programs and compared it against common and accepted business industry standards.

As stated, the change applies to all of our affiliates as of May 1st 2013.

As always, for any commercial or technical inquiry we invite you to contact your dedicated account manager directly or send an email to support@brightshare.com.

The BrightShare Team

*This is posted on behalf of Marcia , our formal Forums moderator, as she is not available due to personal reasons.
 
This is predatory and retroactive if it includes those players referred by affiliates prior to May 1st 2013 which I believe is very much the case.

We have checked ourselves against other programs and compared it against common and accepted business industry standards.

Yes, probably against the likes of Wagershare and Roxy Affiliates which are also rogue microgaming affiliate programs. Or are you comparing yourself to the likes of BWin or Ladbrokes who have never needed and never have relied on affiliates? Very short sighted if you are.....

The BrightShare program has always been, and will remain, trusted, fair and committed to positive long term business relationships. Our tagline reflects what we believe in – Playing Fair, Sharing success.

Your response indicates otherwise. By all means enjoy stealing my money and the money of countless other affiliates who have worked with you over the years. I hope you will also enjoy the consequences it buys your program and the casino properties it represents.
 
As I await further information, I think everyone should take a look at this thread from some years back. Fortune Affiliates made some changes to their affiliate contract that they tried to implement retroactively - well, that didn't quite work out so well at first:
https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/fortune-affiliates-retroactive-terms.8913/

What FA failed to do in the beginning was to consult with their partner affiliates. After realizing that what they were doing was short-sighted and wrong, they stepped back, regrouped, and proposed a more agreeable solution which worked:
https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/fortune-affiliates-retroactive-terms.8913/

Most of the outraged affiliates re-instated the FA properties on their sites; many are still in a partnership with them. FA saw the light and came to their senses.

I hope I can say the same for Brightshare in the next few weeks. I don't believe Brightshare consulted with anyone except for their beancounters and lawyers and decided this is the way to go. I'm quite flabbergasted knowing that there are many seasoned operators and affiliates who could have counseled BS on how to do what they need to do without breaching their contract with their established affiliates.

To introduce ANY term retroactively on their affiliates without their affiliates approval is NOT a partnership; it's a dictatorship.

This can be said about bonuses - what if a casino offers a bonus with a 20x wagering requirement, and while the player is pounding the "spin" button, they come back and say - oops sorry, we miscalculated - it's 30x play-through. How is this not different than what is happening now? Is this analogy valid?

I think so. Retroactive terms are not okay. Brightshare needs to do as FA did several years back and relook at this situation with eyes wide open.
 
It has been raised by a couple of affiliates that Brightshare who are sponsoring the free lunches at the Amsterdam Affiliate Conference in June should be banned from the conference. A very valid point has been raised over on AGD by Engineer, that if Brightshare can afford to pay for 2500 free lunches every day during the conferences, that they can also afford not to introduce retroactive changes to their terms and conditions.

Furthermore, I believe as an eCOGRA approved affiliate program, having been awarded their 'affiliate trust seal', that eCOGRA need to investigate the claims made by their former affiliate program director Lloyd Apter, which were raised in December 2012 over on the GPWA.

The full thread where Brightshare's honesty is called into question can be read here:
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Since eCOGRA will not discuss this issue with me, perhaps Bryan, you can raise this with Andrew Beveridge?

Furthermore, what about Roxy Affiliates? Roxy have so far not responded in this thread and have been pretty much silent elsewhere. If anything their actions are worse, as they are going around shutting down affiliate accounts.

Also something else that requires looking into deeply, is the fact that many affiliates, myself included, have experienced an incredibly high number of locked accounts at Wagershare. Then when they get pulled from those affected affiliate sites, they implement the FU non promotion clause. Subsequently stealing ( I do not use this term lightly ) earnings accrued by their affiliate partners.

If these issues are not dealt with by the affiliate community at large and are allowed to happen unchecked or unchallenged, what we are going to ultimately see is more spam in the search engines and webmasters taking on paid tenancy deals with casinos, which are less than player friendly.

So this really does affect players just as much as it does the webmasters like myself and others who rely on the revenue generated by our active historical player base.
 
One thing that I think that should be considered is that affiliates should be given the chance to give feedback on future changes to any Terms and Conditions. In a perfect world, that could be the case. Perhaps a select few who know not only the affiliate business, but casino business as well.

In other words, affiliates should be offering solutions - not just castigations. It then becomes an "us vs them" environment which alienates and polarizes everyone involved. This is supposed to be a partnership in marketing, right?

As for eCOGRA investigating the claims made by Lloyd, I can forward the link and give a synopsis. I'm sure that they will be interested in looking into this. Mind you that at the moment it is all hearsay. On the surface it's a ex-employee making claims on a message board. You know Lloyd, I know Lloyd, many of us know Lloyd and trust the guy. But as you know, that's not good enough.

What Lloyd should have done (or could still do) is submit a complaint at eCOGRA and explain everything. If you have read the eGAP for the affiliate programs, you will see that this covers mostly the auditing of accounts, security and payments:

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So if there are any discrepancies, hopefully it will come out in any wash. The thing is, it takes more than complaining on a message-board - no one is obligated to do anything. But once you've submitted an official complaint, it becomes answerable in some form or another.
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I've already been in touch with Andrew, and most of the staff is on the road at the moment, but I'm sure they will be looking at this upon their return.

As for Roxy, like I mentioned - they've already gotten back to me and are reviewing the situation.

Wagershare is another story - perhaps needing their own thread.
 
In other words, affiliates should be offering solutions - not just castigations. It then becomes an "us vs them" environment which alienates and polarizes everyone involved. This is supposed to be a partnership in marketing, right?

I agree with you here. But when a program decides to move the goalposts without any discussion overnight, it is to be expected their partners are to be miffed to say the least. Their actions have single handedly already alienated their supposed partners.

What we are seeing playing out here, are webmasters reacting to having their revenue stream cut or removed in it's entirety in some cases, overnight.

Dialogue is good and constructive, but the programs concerned should have thought about this, before making said changes. The keeping of said programs and their properties on sites such as CAP, GPWA etc whilst the dialogue is ongoing or not even started, does not bring the programs back to the table to reconsider. Case in point the Fortune Affiliates thread you referenced on the previous page.

The programs would rather this be kept out of the public environment. The only power we have as webmasters to bring programs back to the table for dialogue is by putting these issues out in the public environment. Something the programs clearly do not want, hence the Marcia Account here posted please email ......
 
Wagershare is another story - perhaps needing their own thread.

Pointless doing so as they have a policy of not getting involved in any forums. My issue with them started 3 years ago and I have already written off the money they owe me.

I have surmised the whole Wagershare issue here for anyone that is unaware of what they have done and are doing:

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An update:

Brightshare this morning have been listed as a rogue program by Affiliate Guard Dog.

Roxy Affiliates have also been listed as a rogue program by Affiliate Guard Dog.

Furthermore looks like Roxy have also introduced a new predatory term to their T & C's in addition to the closing of affiliate accounts, citing non promotion.

The term is this:

5.1 If your account has been inactive, meaning you have not delivered any new depositing players, for more than 3 consecutive months we reserve the right to lower your commission to a minimum threshold of 10%.
When the Roxy rep finally responds in this thread, it would be good for them to also address term 5.1 and confirm whether this is applied to new affiliates signing up from now or covering all existing affiliates, thus being applied retroactively.
 
Webzcas said:
It has been raised by a couple of affiliates that Brightshare who are sponsoring the free lunches at the Amsterdam Affiliate Conference in June should be banned from the conference. A very valid point has been raised over on AGD by Engineer, that if Brightshare can afford to pay for 2500 free lunches every day during the conferences, that they can also afford not to introduce retroactive changes to their terms and conditions.

Yes, I think this is absolutely ridiculous, and they definitely need to be banned from the show and all future shows unless they make things right by honoring all the existing deals that were in place before May 1.

One thing that I think that should be considered is that affiliates should be given the chance to give feedback on future changes to any Terms and Conditions. In a perfect world, that could be the case. Perhaps a select few who know not only the affiliate business, but casino business as well.

In other words, affiliates should be offering solutions - not just castigations. It then becomes an "us vs them" environment which alienates and polarizes everyone involved. This is supposed to be a partnership in marketing, right?

Dealing with T&Cs (existing and proposed) pretty much sums up what AGD does every day. Most of the discussions are in private, and if the properties within the affiliate program are rogued here at Casinomeister, we refuse to review the affiliate program T&Cs.

Brighshare could have (and should have) spoken to AGD about their proposed changes before they went ahead with them, but they chose not to. We were all blindsided. I suspect they chose not to engage with us because they knew we would not approve of such sweeping retroactive changes.

Affiliates are rightfully pissed. I am personally losing thousands of dollars because of this mess. Partly from the commission drop, and partly because many of my players have now stopped playing because of all the bad press (and possibly because of Jackpot Factory's lower maximum daily withdrawal limits which went into effect recently).
 
Regarding Roxy Affiliates -- we were all promised lifetime residual income from the beginning, and there is nothing in their terms (new or old) that indicates they will close accounts (and steal affiliate earnings) if the affiliate doesn't send a certain amount of traffic.

They were rogued at AGD because we have proof that they are closing accounts for that reason, even though there is nothing mentioned about this in any version of their T&Cs.
 
Kudos to CAP. Warren has listened and taken the decision to immediately suspend Brightshare's sponsorship on CAP. In addition CAP have rogued Roxy Affiliates as a result of the changes both programs have been implementing

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So far the GPWA are the only webmaster association dragging their feet on this issue.
 
What the hell is going on with this industry atm.. Now we have Referback sending traffic to bloody Wagershare who are rogue in the finest order and they seem to have done so without informing affiliates. I will be watching what comes out of this next and looks like I may have some more casinos to remove.

The last few weeks have opened up a lot of spots on many affiliates websites, will 1 program step up to the plate and treat us with some sort of respect and like a true partner, and not their dirty laundry.
 
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I have blacklisted Brightshare and will be removing All Slots from my sites over the next 24 hours. I have also referenced and linked to the other sites that have taken the same course of action or forums discussing the changes made by Brightshare.

If you have blacklisted Brightshare and do not have a link on my page, please let me know and I'll add it.

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The GPWA have suspended Roxy Affiliates with immediate affect. Michael Corfman has posted the following.

Over the past day we have had some additional interactions with Roxy Affiliates concerning the closing of affiliate accounts. Our communications have been limited, and not with the individuals within Roxy Affiliates that we feel are in the greatest position to be responsive to affiliates. However, we view that the interactions we have had over the past day are not consistent with our expectations based on the email exchanges and conference call we previously held with the Roxy team.

The recent interactions, which took place this morning, indicate that a further decision has been made to not reopen some of the accounts for which reconsideration was requested. In light of this development, we don't feel the spirit of our prior discussions with Roxy Affiliates are being honored in the way we anticipated.

Accordingly, I have made a decision to suspend Roxy Affiliates as a GPWA sponsor with immediate effect. We remain committed to continued communication and discussion with Roxy Affiliates in an effort to reach a better resolution of the current situation.

Michael

Many thanks Michael

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The GPWA have suspended Roxy Affiliates with immediate affect. Michael Corfman has posted the following.



Many thanks Michael

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Yes it is good to see, but it seems like it took a bit of pressure for them to do so, now we await to see Brightshares fate.

Bryan have you had any more word from any of these programs on these issues?
 
Bryan, have Roxy and Brightshare been in touch with you?

Yes, and as far as I know they are deciding on what they want to do.

Brightshare said that they are "taking this into further discussion" and will get back to me early next week.
 
BrightShare Update

The BrightShare team cares deeply about having a strong, fair and long lasting relationship with our affiliate partners.
We have carefully reviewed the comments and input we received from the affiliates regarding the changes we recently announced.

We wish it were possible to operate using the same terms and conditions as we have in the past but the online gaming marketplace has changed over the years, and it is now a much tougher marketplace with different operating margins for affiliates and operators alike.
However, in reflecting on the issues raised, we understand and appreciate affiliate concerns around earnings for previously referred players.

While we stand by our decision to implement our update as a whole, we have made a decision to apply the new revenue share terms only on new players as of May 1st 2013 and we will maintain the net revenue calculation as per the previous terms for all active players the affiliates brought until April 30th (Revenue percentage scales calculation based on Net revenues, no Negative Carry Over without a High Roller policy, and no reduced Revshare for inactive affiliates on those players).
Revenue share for previously referred players from markets that are closed (France, Italy) will be paid based on a reduced rev share percentage.

All new Players as of May 1st will be under the new terms as was updated.

We feel strongly that this is the right course of action, and that it reflects our beliefs, our deep commitment to the values of fairness and integrity.
We will develop and test the system and reports to reflect the above mentioned exception, and will update our affiliate partners once this is implemented in our system.

We encourage our affiliates to contact their dedicated account manager for any question they still have, and to inquire about other incentives we offer from time to time for ALL affiliates, both large and small, in order to continue to grow a long term partnership, as we have always supported over the years.

The BrightShare Team



(*) This is posted on behalf of Marcia, our Forums moderator, as she is not available due to personal reasons.
 
While we stand by our decision to implement our update as a whole, we have made a decision to apply the new revenue share terms only on new players as of May 1st 2013 and we will maintain the net revenue calculation as per the previous terms for all active players the affiliates brought until April 30th (Revenue percentage scales calculation based on Net revenues, no Negative Carry Over without a High Roller policy, and no reduced Revshare for inactive affiliates on those players).
Well making these terms not retroactive is very welcome news, and may mean you avoid getting rogued everywhere...
But the new terms from May 1st make your program very uncompetitive and affiliate unfriendly - especially for the smaller affy like myself.
I will have no option but to stop promoting your brands (as I'm sure will many other affs), which is a great shame for such a previously highly regarded operator.
I think Brightshare are shooting themselves in the foot with this move; you may increase your profit margin in the short-term, but in the long term this move can only damage your prospects.

KK
 
The BrightShare team cares deeply about having a strong, fair and long lasting relationship with our affiliate partners.
We have carefully reviewed the comments and input we received from the affiliates regarding the changes we recently announced.

We wish it were possible to operate using the same terms and conditions as we have in the past but the online gaming marketplace has changed over the years, and it is now a much tougher marketplace with different operating margins for affiliates and operators alike.
However, in reflecting on the issues raised, we understand and appreciate affiliate concerns around earnings for previously referred players.

While we stand by our decision to implement our update as a whole, we have made a decision to apply the new revenue share terms only on new players as of May 1st 2013 and we will maintain the net revenue calculation as per the previous terms for all active players the affiliates brought until April 30th (Revenue percentage scales calculation based on Net revenues, no Negative Carry Over without a High Roller policy, and no reduced Revshare for inactive affiliates on those players).
Revenue share for previously referred players from markets that are closed (France, Italy) will be paid based on a reduced rev share percentage.

All new Players as of May 1st will be under the new terms as was updated.

We feel strongly that this is the right course of action, and that it reflects our beliefs, our deep commitment to the values of fairness and integrity.
We will develop and test the system and reports to reflect the above mentioned exception, and will update our affiliate partners once this is implemented in our system.

We encourage our affiliates to contact their dedicated account manager for any question they still have, and to inquire about other incentives we offer from time to time for ALL affiliates, both large and small, in order to continue to grow a long term partnership, as we have always supported over the years.

The BrightShare Team



(*) This is posted on behalf of Marcia, our Forums moderator, as she is not available due to personal reasons.

Yes I just received that e-mail but will no longer be promoting them as an affiliate, its not just the last changes, its been the slight cumulative changes that have left me saying what the hell, kind like the days of C-planet. Which ultimately left me high and dry. But as a newbie in the past i have had to learn the hard way.
 
Whichever way Spiral Solutions spin this, the trust has already been broken. The terms as they stand moving forward concerning new players referred are predatory and I will continue to warn my visitors as such.

There are also many unanswered questions, but how the management of Brightshare have handled this issue, to me at least, proves they are a program that cannot be trusted and as such, they will remain listed as a rogue program on OCR.

At least for players referred prior to May 1st 2013, the new terms are not now being applied retroactively. But then again, we have to trust Brightshare, that our active historical player base will remain under our affiliate account. Just commenting out loud on something a high profile former director of the Brightshare Affiliate Program alluded to back in December 2012. :rolleyes:
 

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