Need to know, 6 November: bring out the braziers

UNION UNREST, packages not delivered”¦ no, not the UK postal strike: the world of egaming affiliates.

Taking action against unscrupulous affiliate programmes, a group of affiliates this week decided to unionise to fight their battles collectively against programmes that pay late (or not at all).

The Gambling Affiliates Union had 100 affiliate members at the time of writing the story on Tuesday, just three days after launch, and says that it aims to recruit more than 1000 within six months, including the ‘super affiliates.’

However the group says that it intends to act mainly as an arbitration service between groups of affiliates and offending programmes; and will not call for boycotts. But ““ take note ““ it says it is prepared to take legal action if necessary. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Also due to pay the price for alleged misbehaviour this week is BetOnSports founder Gary Kaplan, who was jailed for 51 months following his August plea deal in which Kaplan admitted to having set businesses in Aruba, Antiga and Cost Rice to provide online gambling to Americans.

At the hearing, Kaplan’s lawyers asked for leniency, seeking to portray him as a figure like PartyGaming founder Anurag Dikshit, who last month revealed he is to exit egaming for good to focus on charity work. However the judge was not oblivious to the obvious distinction between the two ““ that Dikshit pleaded guilty to illegal internet gambling last year and agreed to pay US$300m to US authorities and Kaplan didn’t – and elected to lock him up for the maximum sentence possible under the plea deal instead.

Kaplan isn’t the only high-roller to have rolled downhill, it seems, with 32Red forced to issue a profit-warning this week as it realised it would be unable to grow player yields enough to overcome the impact of the economy on high-roller play in the first half of this year.

The business also blamed an unusually high level of customer wins in October ““ as did Sweden’s Unibet, which blamed football punters’ luck for gloomy third quarter results. Unlike Swedish rival Bettson, whose Q3 figures contained good news instead.

Elsewhere this week, as Ladbrokes moved offshore, Bodog moved on, launching a Bodog London press office with Everest Euro PR chief Ed Pownall. Nor was Bodog the only one hiring, with Mangas Gaming, France’s biggest egaming group, bagging 888 vice president for growth markets for EMEA, Tarquin Henderson.

Meanwhile Bet365 squared up to Betfair in the Oddshecker top 10; Betfair followed its tote deal with the Breeders’ Cup in California with a similar deal with the New York Racing Association, while in neighbouring New Jersey, governor Jon Corzine got court approval to join a fight against the state’s egaming ban.

To the Brits among you, happy Guy Fawkes weekend…