your reasoning for why poker sites went to .net sites is completely incorrect.
I’ve been in the poker business for about 4 years now and have worked with one of the biggest poker magazines in the business.
The poker magazine went to making all advertisers go to .net because the United States justice department threatened to fine any US company that was promoting online gambling. The World Poker Tour was force to pay fines totaling an entire shows worth of advertising for allowing things like partypoker.com to advertise on their site. Now, all sites advertised in the US are .net – free sites.
As for the issue as a whole, I’m not sure about the UK, but in the US, you could get in trouble at any time for running an affiliate program, I’m 100% positive. Most people on this site won’t tell you that.
As I said, I work with (them as a client of mine) a certain poker magazine. Also, the company who writes the software for Bodog is a also a client of mine here in Atlanta. To avoid the US department of Justice, they (the software writer) has to lease the software to a company in Panama, then the software is leased to Bodog via the company in Panama. Payments are made back to Atlanta via the company in Panama.
Long story short, I’m 100% positive promoting casinos like everyone on this site is doing is illegal in the US. If the DOJ wanted to come after people, they could.
So, whether you offer incentives or not, it’s illegal. You are promoting online gambling, which is illegal. People keep saying “but I’m just an advertiser” etc, etc, etc. Yeah, so was the World Poker Tour. You can google it. The World Poker Tour got in trouble and faced HUGE fines. You don’t think http://www.play-my-casino.com could get in trouble?