Huge Dragonfish Blow For Bingo Affiliates
Published On 7th June 2022
Just under a month ago we wrote an article about culling bingo affiliates. This practice often occurs when large companies such as Bet365, Sky, Paddy Power and Betfair decide that they don't wish to work with small affiliate companies such as ourselves. They'll cite various reasons like not hitting quotas or they don't have time or that they wish to focus on a handful of big brands, all of which doesn't stack up as an argument in the affiliate world. Obviously it's not great for us and it's not great for the consumer because it means big gambling brands get to control big affiliate portals and there's no space for emerging or current portals to develop on the same playing field. Unfortunately the bingo affiliate arena is currently built on heavily shifting sands and it's safe to say there are going to be some intriguing changes occurring in the next few months.
Dragonfish Moves To Broadway
On May 18th we reported that license changes were starting to be announced for Dragonfish brands. This follows the acquisition of the Dragonfish platform and a number of bingo brands by Broadway Gaming. We have speculated about the future of affiliate relationships with respect to this acquisiton. For example we commented that "we'd be very surprised if agreements transfer in exactly the same way as those sent out to players" and that "if the agreement is terminated then question marks will arise as to whether referrals etc will be transferred over or if the new company will even want affiliates". And as we actually suspected affiliate agreements with the likes of Wink, Posh, 888 Ladies and many others will all be terminated as of June 30th. In an email sent out to affiliates they were advised that selected brands were no longer under 888 ownership and that "Broadway has determined not to assume an affiliate relationship". This basically means partnerships of over 15 years will be terminated with three weeks notice. To be fair that is quite good for this industry where suspension and termination of contracts are usually done without any notice.
Changing Places
888's group of bingo brands accounts for quite a large percentage of sites we list here on Loquax. Across the old Joy of Bingo and Ignite groups there's over 30 different brands plus 888's own sites such as Bingo Ballroom, Beatle Bingo and Snowy Bingo which takes it to over 50. Admittedly many of these are pretty poor to average sites that not many players will look at or care for. However there are some bigger names in the mix including Wink, 888 Ladies and Costa Bingo. These have often occupied popular spots on many portals and are highly recommended to players. Now that recommendation is in part due to an affiliate relationship between the portal site and the operator. This kind of relationship doesn't (or at least shouldn't) effect reviews of a particular brand but it can influence priority positions and features. However with 50+ sites suddenly deciding to no longer offer affiliate relationships then that will mean those sites will all lose any preferential treatment offered by the portal. In other words don't expect to see the likes of Wink, 888 Ladies and Costa taking top positions on various bingo sites in the coming months.
Who Will Capitalise On These Changes?
With 50+ sites no longer vying for attention that means affiliates will be looking to push other brands into the void. Popular names like Buzz, Gala and Mecca will no doubt feature as normal but others such as BingoCams, Mirror Bingo and Bucky may well start to reach a wider audicence. If we were a brand on Jumpman, Virtue Fusion or Pragmatic Play then we'd be creating some very exciting promotions so that these excite our affiliates who in turn will be looking to send players to sites other than those on Dragonfish. At the end of June many affiliates will lose income from these sites and will be looking to see how to fill the gap. That's easier said than done when the quality of sites out there isn't great and affiliate opportunities are becoming narrower because operators only want to work with multi-million pound corporations and not smaller affiliates - even when they know the market is difficult. Any brand out there currently culling bingo affiliates may want to reconsider as suddenly we're all going to have a bit more traffic to redirect to alternatives.
Interesting Times Ahead
And this is one reason why we're very surprised that Broadway aren't trying to keep affiliates on board - at least based on what we know so far. The Dragonfish platform isn't the best by any means and needs a lot of development to become attractive. The network is full of bit part brands as opposed to a number of iconic bames so it doesn't have that to fall back on to breathe life into it. Remove affiliates and there's not going to be many people pushing Dragonfish as a bingo destination. And whilst affiliates can still work with Moon, Robin Hood, Quality etc on Dragonfish there's going to be a reluctance to do so until Broadway's intentions for the platform and affiliates in general is better understood. Of course it's possible that things could work out for the best. We all thought GVC were insane when they purchased Cozy Games, culled 100s of sites and then moved Foxy to the platform. We wonder whether Broadway harbour similar ambitions? Whatever happens it'll be exciting and interesting but with the way the current climate is we're not so sure Loquax Bingo won't be around to see them.
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