Prevention guide – good to know
In this guide, you can read about casino affiliates and how casino bonuses work (and the truth of why you get them). You’ll also get tips on some easy things you can do to protect yourself from gambling triggers.
Check out the videos !
Summary:
- No independent affiliate sites
- Secrets behind gambling commercial
- Why the casino gives away “free money”
How casinos get traffic
All slot machines, blackjack tables, online casinos, and sportsbooks are created to make money.
Las Vegas and all gambling companies on the stock market are proof of the enormous sums of money they make. On the Stockholm stock exchange alone there are 8 companies, each worth more than $200M.
We don’t see the gambling industry as the enemy. We believe it’s each person’s choice to gamble. To succeed with our mission to help people break free of gambling addiction. We believe we need to work alongside the industry.
We believe pain is the cause of addiction, not gambling. However, some gambling sites play dirty so, we’d like to show you some of the tricks that you might encounter.
For an online casino, there are 2 ways to get new customers.
If the casino makes a lot of tv commercials, more customers will go directly to the casino site. If not, the casino gets most of its customers from affiliate sites. On average, about 50% of the customers come from affiliate sites.
What is a casino affiliate?
Everything on an affiliate site is there to get you to click through their links to the casino. It’s how they make money. Even if the rules on some markets have toughened (the UK in particular), there are still few clear rules for comparison sites aka affiliate sites.
All top lists you see on an affiliate site are bought. Either the casino pays a fixed fee to get “top-ranked,” or the affiliate site has the best margins on that particular casino. There are no independent affiliate sites!
An affiliate site works the same way as any car dealer. They want to sell, and they do whatever it takes to do it! Affiliates top rank the casino they make the most money on… Not the one that fits the customer best. (This is a generalization, there might be a few exceptions.)
There are millions of affiliate sites that focus on online casinos. Most spam emails with gambling-related content are from affiliates — the same with SMS commercials.
Be very cautious with those messages! They are often skilfully made to tempt you with a free offer or a super bonus.
The time when “newsletters” meant news is long gone! Today, all they do is lure you into signing up at a casino.
Keep in mind:
Any comparison site is created to sell. They don’t make any money by focusing on their weaknesses. Be extra careful with over-optimistic reviews that use a lot of superlatives.
How to decrease your exposure to gambling ads?
Need Help To Quit?
Purpose of Gambling Commercial
Don’t let the appearance deceive you. Remember the casino wants to make money.
Why do you get a casino bonus?
Bonuses are still, the best way for most casinos, to compete with other casinos. Free spins, monster bonuses, and free offers, etc. Don’t let them tempt you! The bonuses are the casinos’ ultimate tool to tie you to them.
All casinos want you to register with them. When you’ve done that the offers will start pouring in. A free offer is never free; the price is your mobile number and email address.
Let’s scrutinize bonuses further.
3 reasons you get a casino bonus
- Attract you to the site, or get you to deposit more money
- Get your contact details (email, address and phone number)
- Keep you on the site. Most bonuses come with wagering requirements.
Bonuses always sound good. “Right now you get a 300% bonus plus a pizza. Deposit $10 and get $40 to gamble with.” They trig us to think… I only need to deposit $10, and I get so much for free… The wagering requirement is set so you have to play on the site for a long time before you can withdraw your money… if you haven’t lost them already.
The casino doesn’t make any money with the pizza offer. BUT, believe us, they have done their homework. They know that they will attract X number of players, and Y will make a 2nd and 3rd deposit.
The initial offer is created to get you through the door. After that, the CRM team, and customer relationship management take over.
The casinos market themselves as having the best CRM teams to affiliates. We also recommend the following guide on how the casino operates.
What does a casino CRM team do?
Most casinos would probably say that the CRM team’s main focus is to ensure the players’ safety. In some casinos, it might be true and hopefully, responsible gambling will grow in importance for the CRM teams. But, so far, the main task for a casino CRM team is to keep people playing for as much as possible, and for as long as possible. Here are a few things they do:
It’s the CRM team that creates new bonus offers and brings you gifts. When a casino says they have the best CRM team, in practice, that means they do the most to get the customers to stay.
Extra:
Most affiliates work with new customers. They get paid for the customers they send to the casino. There are some similar services where the casino asks a third party to reactivate old customers. It means that the CRM team hires specialists to call you to get you to start playing again.
In the Podcast, the Success Pod a former player Lukas Better (fictive name) talks about his addiction. Lukas describes how his VIP contact person encouraged him to play all the time.
Among things, he says the casino knew everything about him. They had mapped out things about his family, job, and finances.
In one year, Lukas lost $1.5M, and nobody tried to stop him.
On the contrary, the casino made everything to help him keep a proper facade toward the people around him.
Here are some things he got from the casino:
- Luxury trip for the family to Malta
- Flight to Madrid for El Clássico (Real Madrid – Barcelona)
- Trip to the Football World Cup in Russia
- $4000 in cash because he had had a bad day
- $2000 in cash so he could buy some things in a local electronics store
- iPhone X, just because he didn’t play one day. (Someone called to check why he didn’t play.)
The gifts sound valuable but compared to $1.5M; it’s just pennies. The casinos would never give away anything without reason. In Lukas’s case, they tried to distract him so he would not think about his losses. They wanted him to feel successful.
Some affiliate managers we’ve talked to say that 85-95% of the casino revenue comes from VIP players.
How many of these do you think have gambling problems?
Trends in the gambling industry
In 2018 the no accounts casino hit the market in some countries. They are also called pay-and-play casinos. To play, you just need to add money.
Some things that might happen are:
Identification is made via the bank or payment method. When you’re done, you can withdraw your money right away.
The threshold to gamble became even lower. Of course, the casinos know this. It takes only a minute to start. In these casinos, the bonuses and wagering requirements are gone. That’s at least an advantage for the customers.
In 2022, we’ve seen stronger regulations in the gambling markets in Europe. Germany and the Netherlands have followed added self-exclusion schemes and implemented a licensing system for casinos operating in these countries. We’ve also witnessed some huge fines for casinos not following the regulator’s rules in Sweden and the UK. This trend, we believe will continue.
Some features we expect players to see in the next year or two are:
Even if the markets are regulated, there will always be casinos that don’t follow the rules. Sweden regulated its market in 2019. So far, there are about 400 casinos with a license. However, you can still access more than 10 000 casinos without a license in Sweden. The unlicensed casinos don’t play by the rules at all.
The regulation made it illegal to send text messages and emails without the consent of the customer.
The foreign casinos without the license can still do whatever they want, though.
In Poland, the authorities banned all unlicensed gambling in 2018. To limit access to foreign casinos, the regulators have forced internet operators to add IP blocks to casinos’ websites. It was very effective, and traffic to these online casinos went down by over 90%. Since 2018, the country has launched its own gambling license. To our best knowledge, there is no self-exclusion program available though, nor any helplines for gambling addicts in Poland.
