Affiliate marketing has become an essential component of customer acquisition for all varieties of online businesses. However, despite strong growth in the global online gambling industry, the crucial value offered by affiliates often goes underestimated or even completely overlooked. With more jurisdictions regulating and legalizing online betting and gaming activities every year, now presents an opportune moment for gambling operators, like FairGo, to tap into the benefits of affiliation.
The Scale of Global Online Gambling
The online gambling industry has expanded at an astonishing rate over the past decade alone. Technavio analysts project the market to grow by over $114 billion between 2021-2025, increasing at a CAGR of over 11%.
| Year | Projected Market Value |
| 2021 | $74.24 billion |
| 2022 | $86.17 billion |
| 2023 | $97.38 billion |
| 2024 | $109.94 billion |
| 2025 | $127.65 billion |
With growth at this scale showing no signs of slowing down, the pressure intensifies for gambling companies to pinpoint new customer sources and optimize conversion rates. And this is exactly where affiliates come into the picture.
The Core Functions of Gambling Affiliates
Also referred to as publishers, affiliates essentially function as marketing partners for gambling operators. Their core responsibilities include:
- Generating new leads and customer sign-ups for operator sites through various online channels
- Building trust and awareness for operator brands
- Driving deposits and active play on operator platforms
Top affiliate sites draw in vast amounts of organic traffic through search engines and social media. By integrating gambling ads and links to operator sites within their content, they pass along highly qualified visitors in exchange for a cut of the subsequent revenue or other rewards.
Why Affiliation Remains an Afterthought
Despite the clear synergistic opportunities, many gambling firms still fail to tap into affiliates at scale for customer sourcing. Potential factors for this include:
- Company Focus on Owned Channels – With affiliation traditionally more associated with retail and e-commerce contexts, online gambling outfits often focus narrowly on driving acquisition through owned channels like PPC, SEO and social media.
- Concerns Over Compliance – Questions around responsibility for regulatory compliance, geotargeting requirements and problem gambling can deter some operators.
- Challenges Tracking Value – Compared to other digital channels, quantifying the singular impact of an affiliate can pose challenges with multi-touch attribution.
- Inability to Control Messaging – Relying on external parties for lead generation understandably raises branding concerns for some gambling companies.
But while reasonable at a glance, these notions overlook the proven value of affiliates across the industry.
Proof of Concept: Casino & Sportsbook Verticals
Though still an overlooked channel, many gambling verticals have already witnessed stellar success from affiliates:
- Online Casinos – As the largest segment, online real money slots generate over 50% of affiliate earnings within gambling. Top affiliate sites match and even outperform paid search conversions.
- Sports Betting – With more US states legalizing sports betting, affiliate opportunities in the niche continue to expand. Affiliates enable rapid scaling of customer bases across state lines.
- Poker – Many prominent poker affiliate programs offer 40-50% lifetime rake commissions, indicating the substantial values derived from publishers.
- Bingo – The successes of bingo affiliate programs dispel concerns of affiliates failing to comply with regulatory policies.
The proven value across major verticals sets a blueprint for expanding affiliation more universally across online gambling.
An Offer That’s Hard to Refuse
Beyond the evidence dispelling reservations, affiliates ultimately present online gambling operators with an offer that’s hard to pass up:
- Zero Upfront Costs – Affiliate partnerships only entail rewards on actual conversions, eliminating media waste.
- Scalable Reach – Top publishers can rapidly expand brand exposure and access to vast, targeted audiences.
- Performance Tracking – Sophisticated reporting provides full transparency, enabling operators to calculate ROAS and LTV by source.
- Turnkey Implementation – Plug-and-play affiliate platform integration and dedicated account management make setup simple.
- Ongoing Optimization – Affiliates competitively fine-tune promotion tactics to improve KPIs on an ongoing basis.
With these perks combined, affiliates provide an unmatched channel for scalable and sustainable player acquisition.
An Opportunity Not to Be Missed
As the prospect of legalized online gambling expands to more jurisdictions each year, operators face an unprecedented opportunity to seize market share on an international scale. But capturing the upside requires sources of qualified customers.
Affiliates have demonstrated proven value as a turnkey driver of registrations, deposits and loyalty across gambling verticals. With limited downside and unmatched scalability, they present online gambling firms with the perfect vehicle for acquiring and retaining players to fuel growth.
Operators who continue overlooking affiliates stand to miss out on untold millions in long-term revenue potential. But those moving swiftly to capitalize on affiliation still have a chance to strike gold. The time for action is now.
