It was an interesting talk – the 2 top rakeback affiliates gave their points for rakeback. Such as how it attracted the big money players and aided player rention.
They also encouraged the affiliate programs to begin some kind of screening process for rakeback affiliates to reduce the accidences of players being cheated out of their rakeback deals – this led onto a suggestion that there should be a cap on the amount of rakeback (as many new rakeback affiliates undercut the other rakeback affiliates to break into the market – of course past a certain point you just don’t have a business anymore, so the rakeback affiliate stops paying their players).
Depending on your politics you can either view this as a genuine attempt to regulate rakeback or simply an attempt by the 2 top affiliates to limit future competition and protect their interests.
There were quite a few arguments against rakeback, one of which was that player incentives were not allowed by most operators at the time it began – however unlike other cash back scenarios the poker rooms, weren’t being ripped off by the affiliate so the ones which allowed it didn’t care.
The main argument against rakeback surprisingly came from Party Poker – the argument was that rakeback was essentially parasitic which only recycles the existing player base, never expanding the market.
Since Party Poker is probably the biggest driver with regards to expanding the poker market, I can understand why they completely against it – if it became mainstream it would take a really dent off their profits.
The smaller poker rooms however, will probably view rakeback as the ideal way of poaching the best players from their competitors. The very players which rakeback attracts are also the players who start games and keep the tables busy, so they are the ideal player to have. As long as the poker rooms doesn’t have to deal with calls relating to ‘not being paid their rakeback’ the ones who currently allow it don’t care.
Given what the 2 rakeback affiliates achieved within 2 yrs – I can see a lot of regular affiliates jumping on the bandwagon but then stop a couple of months down the line when they realize the amount of paper work it involves.
My personal thoughts, if you’re not on CPA better start thinking about it.