Bring in the fish or pay fines, Boss Media tells licensees 08/09/2009
BOSS MEDIA HAS introduced fines for poker network licencees that rely too heavily on rakeback and don’t bring in enough casual losing poker players, or ‘fish’.
The rule will focus on the monthly payout ratio of individual Boss Media licencees, analysing the percentage of winning players against losing ones. The payout ratio is calculated by dividing the total cash game winnings by the total cash game stakes recorded for each site.
Boss is able to do this because nearly all its poker licencees use its Webdollar payment platform allowing Boss access to accurate payment data.
If a licencee’s payout ratio in any month is above 99.8% of total stakes, the licencees will be fined. The proceeds of these fines will not be paid to the network operator as on other networks, but will be re-distributed directly to the ‘fishiest’ sites whose payout ratio is below 97.5% of total stakes.
The new rule will be implemented in November. The minimum fine will be half an average day’s gross rake, while the maximum fine will be 3.75 times average daily gross rake.
The measure is designed to push the Boss licencees that don’t target fish into marketing to recreational players, rather than relying on small numbers of high staking players that win too often.
The funds generated by the fines will be redistributed to Boss Media sites according to their payout ratios, with sportbooks expected to benefit the most.
Boss Media was not available for comment at the time of writing.
The issue of poker rakeback has been a source of controversy in recent months after then William Hill Online chief operating officer Peter Marcus called for operators to ‘be strict’ and prevent affiliates from offering it.
For more on rakeback, see our August rakeback feature.
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Posted: 08/09/2009
User comments
Anonymous
I think this is a great tool, its a lot better than fines for rakeback marketing. The operators that get fines will not be able to survive since the margins are so small in the rakeback segment.
credit where due
they might be issuing fines, but they're passing the revenue from the fines onto other operators.
Anonymous
Perhaps Boss Media should fine themselves for producing software products sub-industry standard and they should focus on cleaning house internally.
Markus
There are over 100 operators on the boss network and they had no problem signing up all these operators and taking their money to begin with and collecting rent from them each month.
Anonymous
I cannot see how anyone can consider this a bad idea. Poker and poker networks live of new fish being brought in and the constant competition for the best rakers is very unhealthy. In the end, any spare margin will be given as RB to these players instead of being used for marketing for new players.
By introducing this policy Boss is forcing the sites that focus too much on the high rakers to change their marketing policy, something that will benefit everybody in the long run.
Anonymous
This policy is the best way of protecting the long term poker ecology for 2 reasons:
(1) Its 100% enforceable - its does not rely on having to prove whether an operator is giving away say 50% rake back to someone. It just compares how many winning vs losing players you are delivering. All rooms have to deliver their fair share of losing players for a network to remain healthy. Otherwise the fish generators realise they are being treated unfairly, and either stop marketing, or pack up and leave the network, leaving you with pure shark infested waters in either scenario.
(2) In contrast with iPoker who hoover up the cash generated by the fines, Boss are (uniquely)redistributing the money pro rata to the sites producing the most fish. So sportsbooks for instance stand to benefit the most. Major fish generators are the core strength of any network, and Boss have strengthened their foundations in this regard.
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Anonymous
"Rakeback" rears its ugly head again. It will soon be a word you daren't say in public for fear of public anger.
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