Betting Affiliate Programmes and the Rules on Them

A betting affiliate is a publisher paid by an operator for the customers it sends. The arrangement is ordinary commercial practice and it is also regulated: in Great Britain, an operator is answerable for what its affiliates say on its behalf, under a social responsibility code provision quoted below.

This page covers both halves: the commercial mechanics, which are set in a contract, and the regulatory obligations, which are set in licence conditions and are not negotiable.

How the Money Is Structured

Three models recur, alone or in combination. What follows describes what each term is, so a contract can be read against it; the figures and definitions belong to each agreement, and where a programme does publish a rate card it describes that programme rather than a norm.

Revenue share pays a percentage of the net revenue generated by referred customers, for a period the contract sets — which may be a fixed term or the lifetime of the account. Net revenue is a defined term and the definition is where the substance lies: what is deducted before the percentage is applied — bonus costs, payment-processing fees, betting duty, platform charges — is set by the contract rather than by convention.

CPA, or cost per acquisition, pays a fixed amount per qualifying customer, once. What makes a customer "qualifying" is defined in the contract, and is the term to find: a definition resting on a deposit is a different proposition from one resting on an amount staked.

Hybrid deals combine a smaller CPA payment with a lower ongoing revenue share.

Attribution: Who Gets Credit, and for How Long

Attribution is decided by a tracking mechanism — a cookie or a server-side identifier — and by a window. If a visitor clicks an affiliate link and opens an account three weeks later, whether that counts depends on the length of the window and on what happens when more than one affiliate is in the chain. Which click wins, and for how long, are contractual terms rather than industry constants.

Three questions settle most disputes before they happen. How long is the window? Which click wins when there are several? And what happens when a customer arrives through a channel the operator also pays for directly, such as its own search advertising?

Negative Carryover

Revenue share is a share of a figure that can be negative. A month in which referred customers win more than they stake produces negative net revenue, and the question is what happens to it. Under negative carryover, the deficit is carried into the following month and must be worked off before any commission is paid again. Without it, the balance resets to zero and each month stands alone.

For a publisher with few referred customers, this single term can matter more than the headline percentage, because one large winner moves a small balance a long way. It is worth finding in the contract and reading closely.

What Regulators Require of Affiliates

In Great Britain the key provision is not aimed at affiliates at all — it is aimed at the operators who hire them, which is what gives it force. Social responsibility code provision 1.1.2 of the Gambling Commission's licence conditions and codes of practice applies to all licences and begins:

"Licensees are responsible for the actions of third parties with whom they contract for the provision of any aspect of the licensee's business related to the licensed activities."

The same provision requires an operator's contracts to "require the third party to conduct themselves in so far as they carry out activities on behalf of the licensee as if they were bound by the same licence conditions and subject to the same codes of practice as the licensee". It requires them to "oblige the third party to provide such information to the licensee as they may reasonably require in order to enable the licensee to comply with their information reporting and other obligations to the Commission". And it requires them to enable the licensee, "subject to compliance with any dispute resolution provisions of such contract, to terminate the third party's contract promptly if, in the licensee's reasonable opinion, the third party is in breach of contract … or has otherwise acted in a manner which is inconsistent with the licensing objectives, including for affiliates where they have breached a relevant advertising code of practice".

Those words have a practical meaning for anyone running an affiliate site. The advertising rules that bind a bookmaker bind its affiliates through the contract: under provision 5.1.6, "All marketing of gambling products and services must be undertaken in a socially responsible manner", and licensees must comply with the CAP and BCAP advertising codes. A separate licence condition, 16.1.1, requires operators to "take all reasonable steps to ensure that third parties with whom they contract … do not place digital advertisements on websites providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content".

Two enforcement routes run in parallel, and they are worth not confusing. The obligations in 1.1.2 run to the licensee, which must hold a contractual right to terminate — so one consequence of non-compliance is commercial, applied by the operator. On the second, the CAP Executive's AdviceOnline note on affiliate marketing reads that "Both the business and the affiliate marketer are responsible under the Code, notwithstanding the fact that the ads may have been created solely by the affiliate without any input from the business themselves." That note is worth citing accurately: it is given by the CAP Executive, and says of itself that it "does not constitute legal advice" and "does not bind CAP, CAP advisory panels or the Advertising Standards Authority". But the proposition it states does not rest on the note — the same entry records that "The ASA has ruled that both the business and the affiliate marketer are responsible under the Code", citing three adjudications by name: GTMC Inc (31 July 2013), LifeStyle Advantage Ltd t/a Essence of Argan (6 March 2013) and JC Inc t/a justcloud.com (27 March 2013).

Programme terms reflect the first of those. A notice posted on 30 September 2020 by the programme now trading as FDJ United Affiliates, amending its "Appendix B – Advertising Requirements and Procedures for Affiliate Compliance in the UK", put it that "it is up to the Affiliate to ensure that they are compliant with all advertising guidelines and legislation around the promotion of online gaming in the relevant jurisdiction" and that "Any transgressions will lead to the suspension and possible termination of Affiliate account with the Program".

Red Flags in an Affiliate Agreement

These are terms worth locating before signing, and most of them are about when money stops rather than how it starts.

• Unilateral variation. A clause letting the operator change commission rates or terms at will, applied to customers already referred, makes every other number provisional.
• Dormancy forfeiture. A balance that is cancelled after a period of inactivity, where "inactivity" is defined as the affiliate sending no new customers rather than the existing ones stopping.
• Negative carryover, unstated. If the term is absent from the document rather than explicitly excluded, that is a question to ask, not an answer to assume.
• Undefined net revenue. A percentage of an undefined figure is not a rate. What is deducted before the percentage applies — bonus costs, payment fees, betting duty, platform charges — is the definition that decides what the headline number means.
• Termination with balance forfeiture. Note whether accrued commission survives termination, and whether it survives termination for cause.
• No licence named. An operator that does not say which regulator licenses it, for which market, cannot pass on obligations it does not have, so the contractual route described above does not operate. The advertising codes still reach the affiliate directly.
• Pressure to omit the compliance furniture. Age statements, responsible-gambling messaging and the terms attached to any offer are requirements, not optional decoration.

What This Page Does Not Do

It gives no earnings figures. A commission rate describes a share of revenue that has not happened yet, and no figure here could describe a particular publisher's outcome — so a number would be a guess dressed as information. The rates, the window and the carryover term are in the contract on offer, which is the only document that describes a real deal.

For how this site handles its own commercial relationships, see about this site.