Thread: PartyGaming acquires EmpirePoker.com and associated properties

Party Gaming has taken a decisive step that consolidates our strong position in online poker and concludes our skins strategy that served us well in the early stages of development of PartyGaming. In a $250m deal, Empire Online has agreed to sell to us EmpirePoker.com and other associated white label and affiliate agreements relating to AceClub.com and StarluckCasino.com.

Press release is available at www.partygaming.com

What does this mean from an affiliate’s perspective?

1)Please stop promoting any existing trackers of Empire. PartyGaming will not be responsible for any revenues / payments from existing trackers of Empire.

2)Empire Online Limited is responsible for all dues to you as of 14th Feb’06. Please contact Empire Online to settle the same.

3)Starting Feb 15, 2006, EmpirePoker.com is part of PartyPartners, PartyGaming’s affiliate programme. To promote EmpirePoker.com, please contact us to have fresh trackers issued.

4)All existing affiliate deals with Empire do not hold good on the new Empire trackers which will be issued by the PartyGaming affiliate team. Your Affiliate contact will also confirm the deal that PartyGaming will be offering for promoting EmpirePoker.com

Please do not hesitate to contact us at affiliates@partypartners.com for any further clarifications.

We will be glad to address all your queries and concerns.


Affiliate Team

PartyPartners

Will Empire poker join the Party network again as a skin or will the games be seperate from Party?

So this means that affiliates will not be paid in the future for any players that have been previously aquired that play on Empire?

Your current trackers will also no longer be valid for promoting Empirepoker.com.

Why is PartyPartners making the transition so incredibly difficult for the Empire affiliates? It is very unlikely that everyone will be able to update their websites on such short notice. Basically you have told everyone that they will not be compensated AT ALL for players referred yesterday, today, tomorrow, etc. until they start using the new PartyPartners tracking links.

What makes this situation more laughable -- affiliates have to contact Party directly to get the new links? Why? Why aren't the links available within each person's affiliate account? Party isn't exactly known for their outstanding support... If affiliates need to contact Party directly to obtain new affiliate links, it will most likely be an exercise in waiting, waiting, waiting.... for 6 months, no doubt.

Everytime you close something or acquire it, our hard earned players disappear into thin air.

This is a very disturbing trend, and this can't be allowed to continue. It should be expected that Party will KEEP the referral database intact, and that affiliates of Empire will be compensated accordingly, for life. If this isn't technically possible (or if Party doesn't want to spend the cash to hire someone to figure out how to do this), then they should "buy out" each affiliate with a mutually agreed-upon "lump sum" payment. Party should not continue the trend of simply destroying or ignoring the referral database every time they acquire a new property.

We need to think long term. If Party becomes even larger, they will most likely buy up additional poker rooms and casinos. For you old timers here, how would you feel if Party acquired (for example) Referback and Fortune Affiliates, and then refused to pay you any of the residual income that you've been earning for years and years? I imagine some of you would probably say "oh well" and just accept it. I would hope that most of you wouldn't accept this. If you let a program get away with this once, it will happen again and again. And that certainly is not the way things should be done, in my opinion.

So... Unless Party cleans up their act VERY SOON, I suggest that we don't allow them to grow any larger than they already are. Obviously they have no interest in honoring lifetime contracts that were created with other programs. If you keep promoting Party, they will get larger, they will buy additional properties, and you will continue to lose the residual income that you've worked hard for in the past, whenever they purchase a new property. This SUCKS and we shouldn't sit back and allow this to happen over and over again.

I have been quiet about this crappy affiliate program for a long time, but now I'm fed up with the never-ending stream of complaints, the lack of support, and the horrible business decisions. PartyPartners is by far, one of the worst affiliate programs out there.