Affiliate compliance: Interpreting the rules 

One of the more challenging aspects of affiliate compliance is interpreting the requirements of the regulator. While some jurisdictions such as Sweden and (perhaps surprisingly) New Jersey’s DGE have made it relatively clear, other territories have often been vague. In a meeting I had with the UKGC and ICO, I asked if they had the intention of being more specific in future requirements and, on the face of it, received a logical answer: if they are too specific, companies and individuals could potentially find loopholes making policies harder to enforce.

The obvious downside, as far as the industry is concerned, is the element of interpretation required to ensure one’s compliance obligations are being met. This can be a conundrum for operators but even more so for affiliates which receive mixed messages handed down from the various operators they work with. The one small light at the end of the tunnel is that if we assume that the ultimate goal is to protect vulnerable players, a lot of marketing compliance decisions can be based on common sense. And where there is doubt, some jurisdictions offer an advisory service such as the CAP in the UK, which generally achieves 24-hour turnaround times on assessing creative and marketing messages sent their way.

We usually get involved in helping clients define exactly what to look for when we scan affiliate sites and we see a lot more commonality in requests now than we did a year ago. There are still areas that cause confusion though: for example, the regulators in the UK and Sweden have both stated that “time sensitive calls to action” are not to be used but whereas Sweden was quick to start enforcing fines for the use of “now” and similar words, the UK somewhat – and probably inadvertently – confused the issue by using the example of “bet now” in an in-play betting scenario and to date, we haven’t seen any fines that specifically refer to time sensitive CTAs in the UK.

Searching for answers

That itself causes issues: most of the fines we see are dressed up somewhat generically as AML or “player protection” issues with no specific reference to a marketing event. This is clearly leading to complacency among some operators when it comes to monitoring marketing activity. For example, aside from not paying too much attention to the time sensitive CTAs, some operators are also simply relying on Google searches to find non-compliant content. Google can undoubtedly help but the operator is then at the mercy of Google’s algorithms which are heavily influenced by new content. It doesn’t matter how many thousands of searches you throw into Google, old expired bonuses and historic pages which are more likely to contain issues become increasingly unlikely to appear as time moves on.

On the subject of bonuses, the presence of significant terms and conditions alongside headline offers on UK-facing affiliate sites can also cause some confusion. Initially, the mantra was that these should be one click away from the promotion which, to many, meant that as long as they were on the landing page that the traffic was being sent to, this would suffice. Since then, the guidelines have changed with the UKGC now saying that “…you must present the significant conditions at the point of sale for any promotion, and on any advertising in any medium for that marketing incentive except where, in relation to the latter, limitations of space make this impossible”. Clearly this also covers affiliate sites and social media pages which promote offers.

Most of the tier one operators we work for now provide us with two or even three versions of significant T&Cs to look for during scans with one or two being an abbreviated space-restricted version for mobile. The bottom line with bonuses is that they should be transparent and simple. I’ve always felt that they are the industry’s Achilles heel and the reason we find ourselves where we are now: after all, if an operator’s marketing policy is based on appealing to human nature’s greedy side then consequences are not too surprising. To be honest, the whole idea of a bonus in our industry has become a bit of an oxymoron anyway as they are no longer beneficial to players but to the operators. The sooner they are gone, the better for everyone in my opinion.

One opinion that I tend to share is that we live in an age of political agendas and gambling has made itself an easy target. With politicians often the driving force behind journalistic content, it’s possible that the regulators are having their hands forced. After all, how else do you explain this anomaly in the UK: the UKGC states that you cannot “…suggest that gambling can be a solution to financial concerns” and yet, the government-controlled National Lottery constantly shows imagery and articles with titles such as “Millionaire’s mansion | Life changing” ( https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/life-changing/winner-millionaires-mansion ). I’ll bet you never see that in the Guardian!

Ian Sims is the founder of Rightlander, a state-of-the-art affiliate compliance platform that allows affiliates and operators to identify potentially non-compliant content in regulated jurisdictions. Prior to establishing Rightlander, Sims was an egaming affiliate for 13 years.