Bwin's Rogue and Predatory Behavior

Bwin proudly proclaims themselves to be the world's number one online gambling establishment. They became such a large and successful company by partnering with hard working affiliates who promoted the Bwin brand in good faith, expecting to be paid commissions for the life of their referred players as per the contract they agreed to upon joining the Bwin affiliate program. Little did these unsuspecting affiliate partners know that Bwin had no intention of honoring this agreement.

On September 14, 2010, Bwin announced their new and improved (their words – not mine) affiliate program, Bewinners. Claiming that Bewinners was going to change the face of the affiliate industry, this was how they worded their announcement on the GPWA forums: http://www.gpwa.org/forum/get-ready-go-yeah-our-improved-affiliate-program-192077.html

Get ready to go Yeah! with our improved affiliate program!

Dear all,

the day has come:
Oct,1st is the launch date of our new affiliate program: bewinners, the affiliate program of the bwin group.

Think faster payments, a rewarding level program, high quality marketing tools, the strongest brand in the industry or in one word, simply: Yeah!

At bewinners, you can finally put your talent to the test.
Are you ready for the ultimate challenge?

Become part of one of the biggest successes in the industry.

Your bewinners team

Well, imagine our surprise when we read Bewinners new affiliate terms and conditions. We were absolutely stunned to discover their new terms are riddled with quotas and predatory clauses. Plus, they were imposing these new terms retroactively. Existing affiliate partners are being forced to accept the new terms or stop promoting Bwin and lose the future commissions on all their referred players. These are the same affiliate partners who helped make Bwin the world's number one online gaming establishment. Now they're being kicked to the curb like trash.
"Thanks for making us number one, now piss off, we don't need you anymore!"

Here's a list of Bwin and bewinners most predatory new terms:
  • Commissions will be reduced to 5 percent on referred players 3 years after the player makes his first deposit – applied retroactively so players who have been with Bwin since Oct. 1 2007 will be reduced to 5% this month. (THEFT)
  • Players that fail to deposit within 90 days are removed from the affiliates account and revert to Bewinners, in other words – the affiliate loses the player. (MORE THEFT)
  • If no online invoice is created by the Partner within 12 months after credit of the Commission to his online wallet, the Commission shall be forfeited and will be deducted from his online wallet. (EVEN MORE THEFT)
  • The account of the Partner will be closed automatically and the Contractual Relationship is automatically terminated if during three successive months no new Paying Actives are generated by the Partner. (QUOTA)


Bewinners Rogue and Predatory Affiliate Terms and conditions The following is a break down of the most predatory portions of Bwin's new T&C's... You can check out the complete document here: www.bewinners.com Scroll down to the bottom of the page and open the PDF document that is linked there.

We'll begin with Paragraph 5

Commission

(2)

The Revenue Share shall be calculated as a percentage of the Revenue Base generated by the Paying Actives in the previous calendar month. The percentage rate of the Revenue Share shall depend on the number of new Paying Actives acquired by the Partner in the previous calendar month. The respective percentages are listed on bwin's website. bwin reserves the right to change the percentages at any time. However, starting three years after the date a customer has become a Paying Active and ending with the termination of the Contractual Relationship, the percentage rate of the Revenue Share for this customer shall be reduced to a fixed rate of 5%.

In the second sentence, note that they can change the precentage at any time. And finally, after the player has been a customer for three years, the commission is reduced to 5 percent.
(3)

Paying Actives are those customers of bwin who (i have not yet had a player account with bwin and ii) have accessed the advertised bwin Website using the Link located on the Partner Website, iii) have properly registered with bwin within 30 days after their first access to the bwin Website by using the Link, iv) have made real money transfers to their player's accounts and v) have performed at least one real–money activity within 90 days after registration.

So... they give themselves the option of changing the rules whenever they feel like it and then they are stealing our referrals if they fail to register within 30 days of clicking our links or if they fail to deposit and play within 90 days of opening their account.

(6)

A negative Revenue Base will be balanced to zero and will not be carried over to the next calendar month. A negative Commission, however, will be carried over to the next calendar month. In case of termination of this Contractual Relationship, a negative Commission, if any, is payable within one month after the termination date.

While they do not carry over negative player balances, they do carry over negative commission balances. This is a first for me! And they want you to pay them for the negative if you sever your relationship with them. Seriously!

Next, we have Terms of Payment. We have included three sub–paragraphs from this section. What we want to stress is that first, you need to generate an invoice to be paid and second, if you don't generate an invoice for 12 months, you forfeit your commssions.

Terms of Payment

(1)

The Commissions shall be calculated by the Operator and shall – if possible – be credited to the online wallet of the Partner until the middle of the following calendar month. However, the Operator shall not be held liable for any delay due to technical reasons and events which are beyond the Operator's reasonable control. After crediting the Commission to the online wallet, the Partner may invoice the Commission electronically. The Commission can only be invoiced if the credit on the respective online wallet has reached a minimum amount of EUR 50,––. If this requirement is not met within one month, the Commission shall be carried over until a total of EUR 50,–– has accumulated for the respective online wallet.

(2)

With the personal password and the user name chosen by the Partner and upon conclusion of this Contractual Relationship pursuant to 3 para 2, the Partner shall be granted access to his online wallet on the Partner's login area on www.bewinners.com. The online wallet contains information about the actual Commission.

(3)

If no online invoice is created by the Partner within 12 months after credit of the Commission to his online wallet, the Commission shall be forfeited and will be deducted from his online wallet. This regulation also applies for Commissions older than 12 months, which have been transferred from former accounts of the Partner. Furthermore, all other demands and/or claims of the Partner against bwin shall be forfeited after 12 months after occurrence.

Predatory? We certainly think so! We asked the Bwin / bewinners representative why they require affiliates to generate invoices before they can be paid – he couldn't answer the question. It seems pretty obvious to us...
legalized theft of commissions comes to mind!

But wait, we're not done yet! Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, they get even more predatory and impose a quota...

Paragraph 10 Term and Termination

(7)

The account of the Partner will be closed automatically and the Contractual Relationship is automatically terminated if during three successive months no new Paying Actives are generated by the Partner. The Partner will be informed by bwin via electronic mail after two successive months without generation of a new Paying Active that 30 days later the Partner's account will be closed and the Contractual Relationship will be terminated automatically, if during the following 30 days no New Paying Active will be generated by the Partner. The remaining money on the online wallet will not be transferred to the Partner, if he did not create an electronic invoice until the end of the month following the closing of the account.

For the record – These T&C's were all taken directly from bewinners official terms and conditions dated august 2010

We did not find any reference to crossover traffic in the terms and conditions but it has been confirmed by their representative that Bwin will pay performance based crossover earnings. These earnings start at 10% for affiliates that generate small amounts of traffic and go as high as 20% if you can generate 300 new active players per month.

Bwin and bewinners Affiliate program have managed to make their new terms and conditions the worst we've ever read. We urge all gambling affiliates to boycott Bwin / bewinners and help us bring this predatory company to it's knees. If we let Bwin get away with this, who will be next? This type of rogue behavior must be stopped and the only way to make that happen is by making an example of Bwin and bewinners affiliates.



Email your Comments about Bewinners predatory terms to predatory@belosers.com