Paradise Poker

daniels25 · #1 () 09-22-2005, 07:38 PM

I see that players at Paradise can now use their poker account to place sports wagers at their sister site sportsbook.com. Will affiliates earn revenue on sportsbook loses?

Paradise Affilaites were also Decertified from CAP today because of their connections with Sporting Bet. I have stated in many of my previous posts how I think that Paradise and their stats were shady. Here's an article that may interest some of you affiliates that market them.

""Sporting Bet Casino / Sportsbook affiliates - bad luck

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have been an affiliate of SportingBet since 1999. Yesterday I spoke to Peter Hanford who is the BD manger of Sporting Bet. He informed me that the decision had been made to close down all sportingbet.com affiliate programs including sportingbetaffiliates.com. Peter is sorting out mess created by previous affiliate managers but if you have banner for SB, take them down! Note he told me that Costa Rica based SportingbetUSA is unaffected but sportingbet.com is.

I am actually very surprised that SportingBetaffiliates (the Toronto based affiliate house) havent told their direct sign ups yet....promoting them was a complete waste of time and money for me, oh well.

See round robin email that was sent yesterday:

Dear Affiliate,

I write to inform and update you of recent decisions that have been taken by the sportingbet group that effect ALL affiliates and the sportingbet.com affiliate program.

As many of you will already know Sportingbet.com in it's current state has no geographical market that it focuses on and has growing restrictions on where it can be advertised. Sporting Bet PLC as a group has many regional brands that focus on local niche markets, such as www.SportingOdds.com for the UK market (see ).

Moving foreword, Sportingbet will alter the dynamics of the Sportingbet.com site, so that it enables the Sporting Bet European Business to establish a single pan-European brand whilst in parallel complimenting and supporting the regional brands/businesses.

In essence Sportingbet.com will become a portal/gateway to the European domains. Sportingbet.com will therefore no longer drive recruitment of new customers from an affiliate program or any other form of marketing. Instead regional brands will use their own affiliate programs and marketing to drive new customers to their businesses contributing to the European business of Sportingbet.

It is therefore with regret that I write to inform you that sportingbet are serving notice of termination of the Sportingbet.com affiliate program.
We wish to serve a 30-day notice period to allow all affiliates to remove the sportingbet.com promotions from your websites and therefore the affiliate program will terminate on the 30th September 2005.

Following the termination date a final report for commissions is needed along with an invoice. If you would like me to provide the report for you please request this by email and include the date range required, affiliate ID and agreed commissions structure phanford@sportingbet.com

If you would like to join one of our regional brands affiliate programs (such as sportingodds.com), please contact me for details.

I'm sure many of you may have questions so please do not hesitate to contact me via email or telephone where I will be happy to help 00 44 (0)20 7154
6709 (9-5.30 Mon-Fri GMT).

Many thanks for your business

Regards,

Peter Hanford
Business Development Manager""

Perhaps Stephen can answer these questions for those of you still promoting Paradise.

Stephen · #2 () 09-22-2005, 08:41 PM

Hi Daniels

I am well aware of this negative publicity at CAP, and will gladly explain several things:

1. We were not "decertified" at CAP. We made the decision not to pay the monthly fee that their certification involves. My reasoning behind this was that CAP had become very negative to Paradise...

Originally, I had hoped that someone there would step forward as a truly independent party and assist me in this, but as that never happened, I saw no reason in continuing to work with them.

2. They had asked me to pay my monthly fee, and when I explained that we decided not to renew, they came out with the fact that we were "decertified". I asked why they said that, and they said that they would never take a Sportingbet Company on again.

3. This story with SBet is not as written either. My understanding is that the company is closing Sportingbet.com, and all Affiliates are being dealt with fairly. As I have said here previously, if any of you know of anyone where this is not the case, have them contact me, and I will bring it up with the highest management of SportingBet PLC, including the CEO if need be.

CAP suddenly decided that SBet is "illegitimate" only after I decided not to renew my monthly payment to them. Forgetting that, this decision was also based on hearing one-side of the story. How can any one seriously suggest that one of the largest publicly traded companies is illegitamite without having picked up the phone and speak with them?

Re Sportsbook
Out IT Department is currently working on getting the data across from Sportsbook.com for the Affiliate Program. I have been promised that all data (back-dated) will be with the program by the middle of next month - presuming IT delays, we can presume that by the beginningo November we will start getting this information daily.

Shady Stats
Apart form lacking data, there is nothing wrong with our stats - if you bring a new Player to Paradise that has not been there before, s/he will be tracked! We are a completely open, and honest with all Affiliates, big or small.

This has been very hard on me personally - being made to sound like a common thief is not easy, especially when there are a lot of unstabstantiated claims being made there daily.

Stephen

daniels25 · #3 () 09-22-2005, 08:47 PM

Thank you for replying Stephen. It's always good to hear both sides of the story. Hearing about a company closing it's affiliate department is never good to hear. I think it's safe to say that it does make one worry though when it's a sister site.

#4 () 09-22-2005, 08:49 PM

[Edit - I was making this post at the same time as Stephen's]

I removed the link to CAP's discussion, sorry but I do not want that shit spilling over into this forum. You can go there and read my post to see my thoughts on it.

I don't promote Paradise in my top positions but I do want to say one thing. Being "Decertified" at CAP doesn't mean a thing except for Paradise has decided not to pay a huge monthly fee to CAP. Can you blame Paradise's marketing department? Why spend all that money when Joe Blow affilate is putting out "Warnings"about your program that essentially have nothing to do with YOUR program.

If you are a business person and you look at what happened with Sportingbet, yes that does suck but Sportingbet was an awful site with an awful affiliate program to begin with. Although one company, they are two completely different entity's. Look at Jack Welch's theory of business at GE. Keep in mind GE own 100's of subsidiary businesses. If one of his businesses was not making money......He cut his losses and unloaded it. I'm sure that meant people lost money and were out jobs, just like affiliates being out their players. It's business, it happens, get over it, and move on!

Also keep in mind that Sportingbet does not answer to affiliates! They are a publicly traded company and they answer to shareholders. This is extremely important when looking at what transpired.

Paradise is one of the top 3 poker sites in the world. Would they axe the affiliate program that they spent boatloads of money on to launch 6 months ago? Sure I suppose they could, but the odds of this are just as good as the odds of Party, FullTilt, Pacific.........anybody.

If people have a problem with Paradise stats, then fine, don't promote them or take it up with the aff. manager.

Because this is a public forum I won't disclose any companies but let me tell you, I have bigger issues with tracking and stats at a few other places than Paradise.

I will add to this post later, I need a beer now :P

PPP · #5 () 09-22-2005, 09:33 PM

The irresponsible CAP thread is yet another embarrassment to affiliates. Sportingbet can close what it wants, when it wants, when in clear compliance with its terms and conditions. Affiliates need to actually read the terms before deciding to sign up, and then make their choices about who to do business with and how to be paid based on that. If some folks don't want to do further business with Sportingbet companies now, that would be a reasonable choice, but it is completely unreasonable to accuse them of doing anything illegitimate.

The main problem is still too much immaturity in a rapidly maturing industry. Expecting deals made in 2001 to be completely unchanged in 2051 is irrational to the extreme.

Paradise's real problem is that damn auto download thingee, which still causes all kinds of problems with uninformed folks, which steamrolls into smoke and mirrors complaints.

#6 () 09-22-2005, 10:02 PM

Quote:

The irresponsible CAP thread is yet another embarrassment to affiliates. Sportingbet can close what it wants, when it wants, when in clear compliance with its terms and conditions. Affiliates need to actually read the terms before deciding to sign up, and then make their choices about who to do business with and how to be paid based on that. If some folks don't want to do further business with Sportingbet companies now, that would be a reasonable choice, but it is completely unreasonable to accuse them of doing anything illegitimate.

The main problem is still too much immaturity in a rapidly maturing industry. Expecting deals made in 2001 to be completely unchanged in 2051 is irrational to the extreme.

Paradise's real problem is that damn auto download thingee, which still causes all kinds of problems with uninformed folks, which steamrolls into smoke and mirrors complaints.

I feel like I should just thump a Bible and say Amen! Well written PPP.

Stephen · #7 () 09-22-2005, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Paradise's real problem is that damn auto download thingee, which still causes all kinds of problems with uninformed folks, which steamrolls into smoke and mirrors complaints.

As always PPP - succinct, but also true this time around!

Stephen

nordberg25 · #8 () 09-23-2005, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Paradise's real problem is that damn auto download thingee, which still causes all kinds of problems with uninformed folks, which steamrolls into smoke and mirrors complaints.

Is that why I have more downloads than clicks? I have always wondered about that?

Stephen · #9 () 09-23-2005, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Is that why I have more downloads than clicks? I have always wondered about that?

Yes... Our downloads are recorded every time someone starts the exe file, and as it is started automatically, it inflates the number greatly... I am trying to get a solution togetehr for this, when I update the stats shown over the next few weeks, if not, I may actually remove it...

Stephen

stillshadow · #10 () 09-24-2005, 12:13 AM

Not that I am getting a ton of traffic yet, but for what it is worth I have a couple of players that have been accurately tracked through Paradise. While the stats can seem a little odd at times, all players that actually made a deposit were tracked for me. At the end of the day, that's all that is important.