I knew it would come but I didn’t expect it so soon… We’ve got some great friends in this industry, but obviously when you get successful the eyes of the good and the bad guys aim at you… Yes, we were victim of a DDOS attack earlier today. Our tech guys worked hard but quickly turn on all our defenses.
Result: 14 min our site wasn’t accessible.

Much better than the 4 hours of downtime we suffered a few years ago when we got hit;)

This is the kind of promotion that actually draw serious traction. The first winner of this monthly casino promotion was announced last week.

How’s this good for you?
- The players that you sent will want to participate
- New players will be attracted too
- Tournament are cheap to participate, and keep the players coming back

BOTTOM LINE: it’s a win-win situation for everyone!

Just over three years ago some of you wished me luck when I announced my resignation from the so called “tropez’ group” – (EuroPartners for the newcomers). Some of you are still around rocking this industry and I’m glad to be back!

Thanks to you all for welcoming our brand with such enthusiasm!

While I didn’t have any active role in the industry, I still kept my eyes open on what I saw grow from the early days of online gambling. Some serious power-shifts have occurred over the past years and I expect some drastic changes to move our world in the near future. Regulation is around the corner and while I heard a lot of people saying that it would be the end of the affiliates marketing as we know it today, I’m quite doubtful about this…

Regulation – big scary word… that is meant to set our minds in a “state of fear”… Let me ask you something: how much booze were people drinking during the prohibition???? When the US regulated the alcohol… what happened? Volume of booze sold across the countries just went up etc… and we know the end of the story, don’t we?

Same will go for the online gambling. It will be regulated so the countries will be able to tax the gaming activities… End of story. It’s not about morality, protection of minor, compulsive behavior or whatever you might have red in the papers. It’s about money, protection of state monopoles’ and politics.

Some people (some very smart actually) predict that the affiliate marketers are the one that are going to lose. What do you think? How you feel about this?

I think we’re going to see some serious consolidation and convergence. Large media groups partnering with gambling groups (on/off-line). Those groups will own enough converging media not to go after affiliates. After all, they run TV channels, Papers, Radios stations and portals… why would they need to externalize their marketing?

Those media groups are going to do the job that nobody dared doing until now. Pushing the marketing into mainstream media in a way that turns an industry that is being depicted as problematic, into an integral part of the entertainment industry.

What is going to be left for the independent groups after those media moguls launch their fancy marketing campaigns??? Simple math: the awareness about online gambling will just increase to level that will multiply by 10 folds the volume of online gambling related searches and YOU will be here to collect your fees because the fancy SEM agencies working with the fortune 500 companies never had the “b…” to dive into online gambling…

Now let’s look at the processing angle. Do you know the ratio of unsuccessful vs successful deposit in an online casino? When online gambling will be regulated, those numbers will go down to close to “0”. Everyone in the value chain of online gambling is interested in easing the deposit process. Credit Cards company lose millions everyday because of the fact that we’re still in a gray area.

YOUR bottom line: regulation > legitimation > more traffic > more players > more deposits > more revenues.

Questions, comments: feel free to post/contact me.

Enjoy the spring! EuroPalace is blossoming!

Laurent

Strangely enough, we barely launched Wingate Affiliates’ site and already ideas to make it more dynamic as well as more in tune with the Social Media scene started to spread within our walls. So while it’s still early and we didn’t activate too many WordPress plugins and features, we present you the new Wingate Affiliate site.

Feedbacks and inputs are always welcome.

Have a nice week end.

Laurent