Webinar: Gaming in Europe and how illegal affiliates are thriving

Legal operators are heavily reliant on affiliate marketing and online traffic reaching their sites, but the market has become heavily saturated by unregulated gambling websites.  

The webinar’s host and Founder of Gaming Europe, Willem van Oort, discussed countermeasures, along with four other experts in the industry in a bid to help better understand illegal affiliate marketing.   

What tactics do they employ? And who helps them?   

Google and Meta are among some of the major corporations that are enabling the use and progression of illegal affiliate marketing. Not wanting to bite the hand that feeds you is a term that comes to mind as most operators do not want to engage in any legal battles with Google, as the search giant still provides the most traffic for its websites.   

Expired domains with high authority use bad links and exhaust the same methods repeatedly until it dies or Google simply forgets about it. This has become one of the main methods used by illegal affiliates in driving traffic to their products.   

Unfortunately, there are extremely talented people working for these affiliates, who utilise their SEO (search engine optimisation) skills and industry knowledge to help improve their effectiveness. Conversely, for legal operators it results in financial losses, reputational damage and penalties. The undeniable truth is that many of these illegal affiliates are offering more enticing products that shortcut and circumnavigate the normal avenues legal operators must go through.  

Recognising the crucial role SEO plays in this could be saved for another discussion entirely but along with the manipulative SEO tactics these affiliates use, brand bidding and trademark abuse are commonly used tactics.But another effective trick they are using is creating a copy of a selected website – for example if a website is listed with its official title, an affiliate can simply add a hyphen or an “official” in the title and as a result the operator will suffer potential legal consequences. These affiliates then gain a commission from driving people to these websites using cunning SEO tactics.   

How to stop these affiliates? Or maybe just slow them down a little.  

Make the risk greater than the reward. Legal operators need to focus on making their products more attractive to users, if they are to compete with illegal affiliates.  

Editor in Chief at CasinoNieuws, Frank Op de Woerd said: “We’ve had talks with people all the time, but we need to actually put action to these plans.”  

SEO Expert at Magenta Media, Timothy Malmros Genach, certainly had an action in place when he recommended that regulators should simply issue a DMCA strike to the expired domain. A DMCA strike is a formal action taken against online content that is suspected of infringing upon copyright laws – a temporary but constructive way of suppressing the use of the black market. 

As pressure increases, regulators need to provide more incentives as it is becoming increasingly difficult to compete as a legal operator. In the Netherlands, the KSA (Dutch Gaming Authority) has been implementing many restrictions and regulations as of late, proving to be one of the most committed operators in Europe in putting a stop to illegal affiliates.   

While this may potentially solve the stricter laws surrounding illegal gambling activity and commission manipulation, it also deters existing customers in the sector. Monitoring systems, clearer guidelines and stricter enforcements of regulations from Governments all need to be met, but stronger alliances need to be introduced – in the form of more accurate collaborations with fraud and security teams.   

Much in the same way that fraudulent affiliates are using experienced industry professionals to drive their products forward, legal operators could fight fire with fire and hire their own SEO driven workers to level the playing field.   

In conclusion – what will realistically happen from here?   

The black market cannot and will most likely never be stopped completely. However, this is a global issue that affects the gaming market worldwide and is taking precedence mainly in Europe. The possible solutions listed above are all small steps in the fight against illegal affiliates and perhaps, eventually, action can be taken against large-scale corporations.   

Operators rely heavily on affiliate marketing and among all the technical and regulatory solutions previously listed, the attitude towards fraudulent activity is what dictates real progress. Looking at how certain nations are responding to these concerns gives a clear indication of how to stay vigilant. The Netherlands, the UK and Sweden are all clear examples of how we can combat these issues with real structural change and awareness.   

Investing in your team, and acknowledging that fraudulent activity in the gambling sector constantly changes and evolves, means that legal operators must adapt and evolve along with it. Persistence is key. And maybe thinking outside the box every now and then.