I disagree. Online gambling is a hyper-competitive industry and so is on-strip gambling. It’s not like MGM would be the only Vegas casino to jump online if they could, every single one of them would be there just as quickly as they could. This means that they will have to compete online for marketshare and part of the competition will be for attracting as many online players as possible. For some casinos, perhaps all of them, online revenues could surpass real-world revenues now that the entire world can gamble at the MGM, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay and others, 24-7 from the comfort of their own homes.
The competition would be fierce among these casinos, and there is no guarantee that players will like their interfaces, bonuses, gameplay, etc., any better than current online casinos. Add to this the economics of online casinos where the cost to service 1 gambler or 1,000 gamblers is nominal online…and the marketing managers at MGM and others will quickly understand that any new player that comes their way is worth paying out a percentage to an affiliate. If it is a player they wouldn’t have had anyway, why not give a percentage of the win to an affiliate. Or, if an affiliate can convince a player to switch to another casino, why not reward them. Besides the percentage paid to an affiliate, there is no other downside. Most certainly there will still be an online casino affiliate industry.
An argument could be made that the big casinos wouldn’t be as likely to offer 25% for the life of a player, if this is the case, one of 2 things would happen:
1) Affiliates won’t be that interested in marketing the real-world casino, meaning all of that juicy search engine traffic gets diverted to a competing casino. Do you think MGM would be happy to loose business to Treasure Island, especially once TI has the online gambler they can incentive them to come visit Las Vegas and spend more money in their restaurants and shops. Under this scenario, the first Vegas casino to offer a sweeter deal to affiliates would be rewarded handsomly and the rest of the casinos would then jump on board.
2) The industry could decide that 10% commission for life is more than fair, and if their brands dominated online, they might have the power to leave it that low. But, this could come with much higher conversion and retention rates than current online casinos experience. Even online, it’s the known brands that convert better than the unknown online casino. For the affiliate, this would mean that the same amount of traffic converting at a higher rate and playing for a longer period of time would result in more income, even at a lower commission rate.
No, the affiliate industry would not die if the online gambling industry were regulated, on the contrary, it would open up a whole new world of opportunities for affiliates.
IMHO