Despite the great fun and winning opportunities offered by trusted online casinos and sports betting sites, some rogue blogs and sites use sloppy tactics to specifically direct players to the underrated casinos and bookmakers.
There is hardly any other industry that makes it so easy to make as much money as online gambling. Billions of euros are handed over every year in Europe. Yet, thousands of German casino players are robbed due to insufficient legal security, the loss of seals of approval and, above all, unscrupulous advertisers.
How does an online casino work?
To understand why making millions with a little criminal energy in the gambling arena is so easy and rewarding, one must first understand how an internet gambling company is organized. It doesn’t matter whether it offers the lottery, poker, casino, live casino or sports betting.
1. The website
Sure, no sportsbook or online casino can operate without a website. You usually need a theme or leitmotif to stand out from the crowd. Apart from the design, a casino does not require any unique selling points. The only important thing is that the website is fast and optimized for mobile devices.
2. The backend
In addition to the website, which is also known as the “frontend”, the casino also needs a backend that includes customer data and games.
3. Casino games
Hardly any provider makes its own games, which would also be much too expensive, thus the operators easily integrate games from many manufacturers such as NetEnt, Microgaming and EGT. Live casinos can also be integrated without any problems.
4. Payment Options
Even a small casino can offer many different payment providers such as PayPal, Paysafecard, VISA or bank transfer.Another problem is illegitimate deposits. For example, people keep trying to deposit with stolen credit cards and then withdraw them to another account. Then the bank books the credit card deposit back, and the casino looks stupid!
Therefore, you will also have to review the so-called “Risk & Fraud” departments at reputable providers. These also make the verification of your documents for the proof of identity and the legitimization of your transactions.
5. License
We cannot stress it enough, only play at online casinos with a legitimate license from Malta, Gibraltar, Curacao or UK. Legal security is essential if you really want to keep your winnings. Almost every casino has lawyers who ensure compliance with the license requirements and thus also offer you a safe gaming environment.
6. And then there are the affiliates
Now you actually know how a casino works. Dozens to hundreds of employees ensure that everything runs smoothly. Some providers such as the Betsson Group even have thousands of employees.
But so far we haven’t talked about the most important group for customer acquisition: affiliate managers.
What is the role of affiliate marketing in the casino industry?
No matter how good a casino is, they have to depend on advertising and partners to get known and win customers. The casino market is highly competitive. Many casinos are not profitable at all and therefore need a lot of new customers every day to keep the investors happy.
Well over half of all customers are referred through affiliate portals. As a rule, these are website operators who create banners, links and similar content to create traffic and direct it to the partnered gaming providers and who sometimes get paid royally for this. Some casinos pay up to € 300 monthly for affiliate portals.
In addition, affiliate portals can get paid on every player who clicks on their referral link, sign-up, and makes a deposit. Other compensation models are based on a percentage share in the losses. If you lose, the casino and the site’s admin will be happy. This model is called revenue share.
Fraud in the virtual gambling industry
When there is so much money to be made in any field, it also calls for many dubious and criminal companies and individuals.
The most common models are spam, deliberate misinformation on SEO-optimized pages, stolen or copied content, and other illegal techniques, briefly summarized under the catchphrase “Black Hat”.
Casino spam emails
In May 1978 a spam mail was sent for the first time. 40 years later, unsolicited commercial emails are still not a thing of the past, but they are not that annoying. Thanks to good spam filters, email harassment will hopefully be a thing of the past in the near future. Nevertheless, it leaves a bad feeling that many online casinos have relied on the services of spammers. But improvement is in sight. Leovegas, for example, has announced that it will almost completely forego advertising by third parties via newsletters in the future. Let’s hope other casinos will follow suit.
Unreliable gambling sites
The list of supposedly independent test sites is endless. There are thousands of pages that lead readers to believe that they are giving serious recommendations for their next casino visit.
Behind this are huge corporations with providers who only want to earn money, and of course, that affects the information on these pages! That is why you will not find information on the best online casinos on most sites, but on those that pay the site operators the most.