James Ashton from FindMyUKCasino.com says that affiliates targeting self-excluded players are damaging the entire industry

The relationship between online casino operators and affiliates is under more strain than ever before as regulators and watchdogs continue to tighten responsible gambling requirements.

The UK Gambling Commission has made clear that operators are ultimately responsible for the content that is published on their behalf by affiliates.

This has forced online gambling brands and their affiliate managers to audit their publisher partners and set guidelines for the responsible marketing of their sites.

As a professional online casino affiliate committed to responsible and compliant marketing, we have welcomed this approach as we believe it is also our responsibility to protect players.

This has seen us carry out major changes to our site, from ensuring significant and full terms and conditions are always next to bonus offers via auditing and reworking content.

For example, our best online casino page only lists four of our partner online casino brands with those listed scoring the highest during our review process.

Other online casino affiliates list hundreds of online casinos under their best online casino pages in a bid to maximise revenues from what is usually a high-volume traffic page.

We believe players searching for best online casinos are looking for information about the brands that stand out above the rest – listing hundreds to maximise commission is therefore irresponsible.

There are plenty of online casinos affiliates just like us, affiliates that care about players and being responsible over trying to turn a quick profit. But there are some that are not.

Recently I have seen a growing number of online casino affiliates creating content aimed at UK players that have self-excluded, pushing them to non UKGC-licensed websites.

These publishers are writing ranking pages around terms such as “Online casinos not on GamStop” when we all know that UKGC-licensed operators must work with GamStop.

These ranking pages then list tens or even hundreds of online casino sites that hold licenses from Curaçao and other offshore jurisdictions.

The only reason for creating content around these terms is to target those that have self-excluded because they believe they have a gambling problem or acknowledge the have an addiction.

This is disgraceful behaviour on behalf of the affiliate and is doing untold damage to publishers that believe the foundation of their business is to protect all players, not just the most vulnerable.

Some publishers have stopped short of actually listing online casinos that are not on GamStop and that don’t hold a UKGC licence, but have still created content around these terms.

Again, this is clearly aimed at drawing players searching for these terms to their sites, and then pushing them to other articles and reviews where they are encouraged to sign up and play.

Online gambling operators should also be concerned; some of the publishers creating these sorts of pages are among the largest in the industry and also promote UK-licensed brands.

These operators should be concerned about what impact partnering with affiliates that undertake such black hat techniques might have on their licence should the UKGC find out.

This practice needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency; online casino affiliates publishing such pages should do the right thing and take them down.

UK-licensed online casino operators should better audit their partners – just Google “Online casinos not on GamStop” and you can easily see who is creating content around these terms.

Once they have identified the culprits, they should issue an ultimatum – remove the page or they will cease working with them. This is the only way to protect players and, ultimately, their licence.

On a personal and professional note, it really is a shame to see that some affiliates do not see that their ultimate responsibility is to ensure that players are properly protected.

To do this, they need to provide them with the information they need – including T&Cs – about online casinos to enable them to make an informed decision about where to play.

They should make players aware of the resources available to them if they do feel they have a problem, such as GamStop, and not use it as a technique for acquiring new players.

There are plenty of affiliates out there doing great things when it comes to responsible gambling and compliance, which makes it such as shame that a small number are behaving so badly.

This is not only damaging to online gambling operators and affiliates, but also to the UK players they are pushing to these offshore sites.