JMO but I believe a large part of it is the changing landscape of the industry. Years ago a place like CM was an excellent venue for a new casino to get its toes into the player community — which was considerable — and get themselves noticed, hone their offerings and programs, chit-chat with the competition, etc. But that scenario was predicated on a couple key realities of the day: small-ish casino operations, and some measure of longevity in the rep saddle, meaning not shuffling off at the earliest opportunity to some other more lucrative and less “exposed” position within their respective companies.
With the massive drift toward amalgamation and consolidation within the industry many of the factors that made being an active rep rewarding and compelling back in the day have evaporated. Casinomeister was more or less an open marketplace for small-ish, individual-driven casinos but how many of those are there these days? And thusly, how many companies see value in paying someone to spend time as a rep here VS buying ads on whatever platform is the place to be these days? With all those changes afoot I think the whole rep scene has undergone a widespread deflation as a result.
Now, all that said, there are still a fair few experienced reps here though many have opted to hang back in the shadows and avoid the fray of the open forums. Also, I’ve recently learned that “a lot of casinos avoid Casinomeister because they don’t want to go up in flames on the forums”. So I think it all comes down to return on investment: what do you get back for spending time and effort on the forums? All of the above has, I think, said “not much” and so the rep benches have emptied.
At first that looks like a pretty gloomy picture BUT I think there are a number of factors _currently_ at play that will change some of the metrics we’ve had to live with these past several years. For one thing having Gentoo behind Casinomeister has all of a sudden lit a fire under the whole Sales and Marketing side of site. Gentoo is driving a lot of new — or at least new to us — casinos toward the forums. We’ll have to make space for them, give them a voice here, and frankly introduce them to forum life.
Also, suddenly, there are real financial resources available to flesh out areas of the site that have suffered a little malnutrition over the years, to have more staff contributing content and supporting material to the site, and (to put it bluntly) experiment a little with ideas to rekindle both interest in the site and the value of the site to players and casinos.
And last but not least there is the huge issue of the big guy hanging up his gloves. Undoubtedly that is a loss to the site, no question, but it’s also revealing itself as an opportunity for those of us who simply must step up and assume some of his responsibilities. It’s time to up our game, take on new roles, and that inevitably brings some fresh ideas to party. Not easy, not always fun, but there is no shortage of challenge here and in many ways that’s not a bad thing.
- Max
was the “best UK online casino” (it was!) and using this amazing site as evidence! It’s not easy to claim something like that in a TV advert! It got more difficult when it was best group etc lol.
