William Hill Online exec denies rakeback 'hypocrisy' charge 07/07/2009
William Hill Online (WHO) chief operating officer Peter Marcus has defended WHO’s use of a rakeback strategy to move players across from the CryptoLogic platform, after some affiliates accused him of hypocrisy in calling for a ban on affiliates and skins using the rakeback rewards model.
Reader comments on the recent EGRmagazine.com rakeback story included one describing Marcus as being “highly hypocritical to make a statement such as this when William Hill themselves are actively involved in this means of player acquisition”.
Speaking to eGaming Review today, Marcus admitted WHO used “a targeted promotion” to existing players in the first few weeks of the new iPoker software to help customers to migrate across from the CryptoLogic network.
Marcus said: “This was only available to selected existing players and for a very limited period of time. This is a clear and targeted retention bonus and was not aimed at, and nor did it, move players from other affiliates or operators”.
Marcus added that his previous comments were not meant to devalue the role of affiliates. “I, like many others who have been in the industry for some time, truly value the contribution that affiliates make and will continue to make for many years to come,” he said.
However Marcus continued that there was a need for the separation of responsibilities between affiliates and operators. “The role or retention and player life value is the responsibility of the operators, whilst the role of the affiliate is acquisition of players, he said.
Marcus said that his intention in calling for an end to affiliate rakeback was to try and get the whole industry looking more closely at how it used retention and loyalty schemes to maximise player value and player satisfaction.
Peter Marcus’ views will be published in full in the eGaming Review August edition’s special rakeback feature, which also includes views from Rake the Rake chief executive Karim Wilkins, Entraction chief executive Peter Astrom, poker affiliate Bill Rini and Keith Freeman, founder of Poker-Strategy.org, the industry's first affiliate to offer a ‘rake rebate’.
To have your say in the rakeback debate, click 'add a comment' below.
For more on WHO, see our interview with William Hill Online CEO Henry Birch.
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Posted: 07/07/2009
User comments
Anonymous
But most of them already do operate their own rakeback programs and pay the players direct. They just use rakeback affiliates to bring the players in.
Everyone gets a bit distracted away by the word "rakeback"
Rakeback is merely another form of bonus...same as a reload bonus...live event package...free ipod...freeroll...loyalty VIP cash back program
And all of those are just tools to retain the player
Rakeback by any other name would smell as sweet
Anonymous
People in glass houses etc etc
Sounds as if Mr. Marcus wants to do away with the "lifetime value" style of affiliate deals and confine affiliates to simply fetching players for him - probably at lower rates.
Anonymous
good luck on the "whole industry looking"! As usual it will be everyone for themselves and only the affiliates will win.
Anonymous
Ahhh Rakeback how does one get that genie back in the bottle.
So William Hill have realised that it isn't such a wise move to give your most skilled players an additional benefit of 50-60% rakeback so they can bust the newbie sportsbook poker players even faster.
They will also realise at some point that this strategy of busting their sport book clients by offering additional incentives to sharks (and then giving away over half of the profit)will be pretty bad for their sportsbook as well.
Talking of targetted e-mails I got the hills rakeback offer of 60% and I hadn't even played in the preceeding 12 months!
Anonymous
Lol at this response: "This was only available to selected existing players" - by selected I assume he means any player who was signed up on William Hill prior to the merger. Because, that is who the promotion was available to. He was also probably unaware that a large affiliate company who works with WH was telling people to hurry up and register a new account pre merger to enable them to be grandfathered for Ipoker rakeback. I'd love to ask Marcus how many players signed up on William Hill in the last month before the merger. I'd also like to ask him what % of these never played a hand on WH when they were part of the Cryptologic network. Finally, I'd like to ask him if he thinks these players should be grandfathered for rakeback seeing as they are such loyal WH customers. I hope egaming can ask Marcus these questions.
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Anonymous
Why operators didnt manage their own rakeback offers in the first place is beyond me. I guess no one ever imagined it would get so big.
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