GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 45 - October 2019

In gamer gambling, the biggest affiliates don’t even see them- selves as affiliates. They mostly see themselves as successful YouTubers and gamers. Some of the big YouTube channels promoting gamer gam- bling are: • m0E TV: Gamer Gambling 26.5M views | Total channel views 140M views • maxmoefoegames: Gamer gambling 20.4M views | Total channel views 290M views • GoldGloveTV: Gamer gambling 17.4M views | Total chan- nel views 330M Views The only exception to the YouTube rule is flashyflashy.com, which has become a hub for gamer gambler sites. It gets around 125,000 visits per month and ranks for phrases like “csgo gambling” and “vgo skins.” TYPICAL REVENUE PER USER AND AFFILIATE DEAL STRUCTURES Gamer gamblers don’t generate that much revenue. We’re talking about monthly average revenue per user of maybe $6, and the cost of acquisition reflects this. Obviously deal structures are dependent on what technologies operators use. Most of the big gamer gambling sites don’t seem to have very sophisticated tracking. Following that, they don’t have standard revenue share deals. Typical affiliate deals include percentage of player deposit, or a low CPA of maybe $0.50 per referral. You often find operators saying things like, “If you’ve got more than 5,000 followers, talk to us about a deal.” There are very few gamer gambling operators talking about revenue share. Overall, affiliate deal structures vary massively from one operator to the other. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to do a like-for-like comparison between these gamer gambling operators. LEARNING FROM HISTORY To me, the gamer gambling ecosystem feels like crypto gambling from 2013. Lots of thin script sites, not much infrastructure, a few white-label operators and very little conformity. Fast forward to crypto gambling today, and it is dominated by businesses like Softswiss that have morphed from pure crypto into a hybrid fiat/ crypto offerings. Go back to 1996 with the emergence of iGaming — you had randomness. As time passes and ecosystems stabilize, they fol- low certain patterns. The prevailing pattern I saw with crypto gambling was: • Emergence of clear naming conventions that gamblers understood. • Growth of affiliate marketing as a traffic generator. • Revenue share becoming the standard reward system. • Emergence of powerful white-label operators. Gamer gambling has all the inconsistencies of early crypto, but with a massive potential audience of gamers. WHAT’S THE FORECAST? Does gamer gambling take off? And if it does, how is it going to turn out? Is it going to play into your hands as a traditional iGaming affiliate? Here’s what I believe about gamer gambling sites: • They will carry on as a subculture of the internet for the next two years, at least. • They won’t necessarily get mainstream gaming licenses, because the main jurisdictions don’t like the anonymity of cryptocurrency. • It will remain a high-volume, low-acquisition-cost ecosystem. • More operators will offer standard revenue share. • The turning point will be clearly understood naming con- ventions for this group. • As esports (sports betting) carries on developing, opera- tors will want a casino equivalent that gamers like — and it’s not slots. • Somebody is going to come up with a game-changing innovation equivalent to Betfair.com and exchange betting. Finally, if this area takes off, what do you do? You’re unlikely to have a big gamer YouTube channel. You’re probably good with SEO. In your case, I would just start keeping track of this ecosystem. And if it starts to ramp up, then do what you do well: Get a website up, get it ranking on those gamer gambling core phrases and start doing deals with operators. Nick Garner is the founder of RIZE Digital, a marketing agency based in London. Gamer gambling has all the inconsistencies of early crypto , but with a massive potential audience of gamers. GAMER GAMBLING G P W A t i m e s . o r g 38