PokerStars Terminating Affiliate Agreements

If you are an affiliate of the world’s largest online poker site, PokerStars.com, it appears you won’t be for much longer.  The company has begun terminating affiliate contracts.  Whether this will affect everybody remains to be seen.

PokerStars was purchased by Amaya Gaming over the summer and it was widely rumored then that major changes would be on the horizon, some of which would adversely affect business relations.

John Wright of The Gaming Affiliates Guide writes:

Poker affiliates might want to think twice about working with PokerStars Partners, the poker affiliate program for PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. It seems that since Amaya Gaming bought PokerStars for $4.9 billion that people wondered what would happen to the site itself and how it would affect affiliates. Well it seems the program doesn’t care about the affiliates that helped it to become the #1 poker site online. What does seem clear is that the company is looking to turn itself from one that made a ton of money from the US and worldwide markets, to one that fully obeys the gaming laws of where it accepts players from. PokerStars is long rumoured to want to keep it’s image clean and pursue the US gaming markets as they are currently opening up.

One affiliate wrote on the AffiliateListings.com forum:

I would like to extend my "gratitude" to PokerStars for having closed down my affiliate account yesterday. The reason given was that they felt I had too many old players generating revenue to justify my monthly payment. As if we were on some sort of flat monthly deal.

Others chimed in to announce similar stories of PokerStars systematically cutting off ties to affiliates.

For some, explanations were not provided.

- Ace King, Gambling911.com