Thread: PartyGaming acquires EmpirePoker.com and associated properties - Page 3

Dear Affiliates

We have no intention of shortchanging our affiliate relationships. We are putting down our position in a systematic manner here to try and address affiliate concerns.

•Empire Online Ltd. (EOL) had a contractual relationship with PartyGaming, which entitled Empire Online Limited (EOL) to a share of the revenues generated by players who played on the PartyGaming system via Empirepoker.com and/or Aceclub.com.

•When PartyGaming agreed to acquire the assets of Empirepoker.com and Aceclub.com from EOL, we agreed to terminate that contractual relationship between PartyGaming and EOL.

•Anyone who was an affiliate of EOL or one of its companies and who sent players to Empirepoker.com and/or Aceclub.com had a contractual relationship with EOL and not with PartyGaming or any of its companies, to be paid by EOL for such players on whichever terms were agreed upon by EOL and the affiliate. PartyGaming is not a party to such agreements nor is privy to them.

•PartyGaming paid for the player revenues from 14 February onwards as part of the overall consideration of $250M. It would not be fair or appropriate for PartyGaming to be compelled to pay additional money to Empire affiliates for obligations owed by EOL or it would effectively be paying twice for acquiring the same players. Therefore, EOL and PartyGaming agreed that EOL would remain liable for its obligations to its affiliates.

•The outcome is that if any affiliate of EOL is owed any money up to the date EOL terminated its contractual relationship with it, it must look to EOL to meet that liability. It cannot look to PartyGaming. We are providing the necessary information to EOL to enable them to calculate those liabilities and we have no reason to believe that they will not meet their liabilities to their affiliates.

•To continue as an affiliate for empirepoker.com or aceclub.com from 15 February 2006 onwards, you will need to enter into a new agreement with PartyGaming. You can do this by contacting your existing Affiliate Manager at PartyPartners or write to us at affiliates@partypartners.com, we will be happy to set this up for you.

Affiliate Team

Party Partners

Partygaming buy up a skin and duck the affs? This is not as clean cut as Party would like to make out, because effectively they were the software supplier.

Empire was doing fine. Party locked off the players. Party thereby reduce viability of EO skin. Party buy the skin for cheap. Party don't migrate the aff accounts either.

Someone is having a party for sure. I don't think the affs are invited.

I still do not think that PartyGaming is at fault here. If you guys want to blame anyone, it should be Empire Online. They sold their business to PartyGaming for $250,000,000. How much of that money is going to their pocket and how much of that is going to their ex-empirepoker affiliates? They are pocketing the entire lump sum without any of it going to the affiliates who helped make empire poker a success. It would have been nice if they gave X amount of dollars per player referred on MGR to their former affiliates. I think everyone would be happy with that.


Note: I have over 300+ RMP's with EmpirePoker. So I am taking a fairly big hit.

Originally Posted by Dominique

Party bought empire including everything, all the records, everything.

In the real world, you may well get fired after a company take over, but you do have rights to settlements in that case.

It's theft, and I doubt that Party will do the right thing. They didn't even map over the casino players from casinos they owned all along.

This is not just a bad way to act for Party in specific, with all the consolidation now and in the near future, it sets a very troublesome precedent for us. The industry is contracting and consolidating left and right, and this time next year there will be a much smaller number of programs around. Will we all be out of everything we have worked for all these years then?

It would be easy enough for Party to map the players over, like Casino Rewards mapped Captain Cook's players over.

I bet Wager Junction will map the players of the 5 casinos they just bought over for us.

Some places care about affiliates, and some just don't give a hoot. Party has forgotten who made them. Same for Casino Pays, the Partnerpage players were not mapped over.

Shame, shame!

I feel the same as Dominique, nothing like being used and abused by these shaddy and often corrupt people. I would toss them all out and let them go to their own Marketing. The seem to be doing a good job of that anyway. greek39

I have to admit that I'm baffled thay anyone is surprised by Party's actions, in regards to this issue. This is the same company that knee-capped its own licensees by decoupling the shared player base in a premeditated move to then buy those same distressed properties later for pennies on the dollar.

It doesn't excuse their actions, as far as cutting affiliates off from the Empire player base they spent years to build up, but it shouldn't surprise anyone. If they're willing to blatantly screw their own licensees, it shouldn't surprise anyone that they'll bend over affiliates, as well. As far as costs to cut, now that they've gotten the skins out of the way, affiliates are next.

Scan through the PartyGaming threads here. It should take you about thirty seconds to realize that PartyGaming would absolutely love to sever all affiliate ties (except for maybe a few super affiliates) entirely, now that they've reached critical mass. It's no coincidence that affiliates are having so many issues with frozen accounts, complete and utter lack of response from account managers, missing stats, missing payments, and stolen player bases.

I can't help but think that it's best to just move on at this point, and completely write off any revenues from Party/Empire/whatever skin. The writing has been on the wall for awhile, for the vast majority of Party affiliates. There are plenty of good programs out there that actually care about maintaining and developing relationships with affiliates, and are committed to honoring contracts and agreements.