Hello, everyone!
I represent sales dept from SEO traffic team and the reason I have started this thread is to share with you our work case with Freshbet casino brand for UK geo. This is one of the brands from the holding, which also includes Goldenbet and Mystake (with whom we also worked and received the same negative experience as with Freshbet).
Our cooperation with Freshbet partners started in Q2, 2023. Our brand sites have the top positions in Google. We have contacted a direct advertiser and quite quickly agreed on a very democratic hybrid deal for UK market, 70eur+40%RS with clear agreement to increase our deal after we send some traffic volume and if results are good. The deal itself, its nature (brand traffic), agreements where clear and approved by both parties.
After several months of what seemed a normal cooperation (as it seemed to us first), quality traffic (based on cut stats we were able to see) and normal payouts our request was quite clear to increase our commission up to 250+40%RS (which is absolutely standard for UK geo), but Freshbet manager refused to discuss and bargain on deal that we had. During that period we still continued to send traffic to their website and saw that month over month our payouts are on the same level that almost equals only CPA part of the deal. That is why we requested detailed stats.
It took more than 3 weeks and several ongoing requests to get at least somehow what you can call an advanced stats (still no full access), based on which we saw how much our players deposit, what percent of these deposits the casino earns and accordingly we calculated our RS part. We saw huge amount of over 1 000 000 EUR deposits with our payouts of 67k. It looks like straight and uncovered shave!
We were more than surprised by the fact that the casino earned 10% of the total amount of deposits. We work in this market not the first month and the not first year so have a clear understanding how much a casino can earn with a Curacao license in UK geo. We do believe it is not less than 25-35% from players deposits amount, but not 10%.
We clearly shared our disagreement with such attitude and what we believe to be fraud (with minimum amount of 100K not paid to us) with Freshbet manager, who always changed the topic, got lost for long period of time and than tried to blame us on false occasion like links not working, brand not listed and etc. In the end he decided to pass the ball to their CEO who led the communication further.
To make the long story short: none of our requests about profitable cooperation for both sides where seriously taken into consideration, we were proposed to thank Freshbet for the bone they are throwing to us and that it is not our merit, that they were obliged to shave us, no explanations regarding STRANGE stats, no readiness to increase the deal as we agreed at the beginning.
Only after that dumb and scummy attitude we than decided to send traffic on other brands.
Also, it was surprising for us to hear such position from Freshbet as on screenshot below. From the very beginning we provided traffic only on their website and helped them to defend their brand serp when their own domain was hidden from indexation. Even if to say we used their brand and rights than in this case it was for their brand best interests. I want to underline once more – we have never hidden the fact what kind of traffic we are sending to Freshbet and that we defend their brand serp and they were absolutely ok with it.
We suggested Freshbet CEO than to buy our site at a fixed price 100k eur (this price is based on our lost profit because of the shave from Freshbet side), but again no readiness to close our cooperation in business correct way was there. What was there for sure is 25k offer and lots of threats (legal actions, blocking the website, affiliate accounts blocked).
As the final of our case, we have an update already that our accounts with all the results of our 1-year business with them already are fully blocked (all 3 brands: Freshbet, Goldenbet and Mystake) and we don’t have access to them.
We share this case on the Internet to protect other teams and here are the reasons and our financial claim:
1. Unclear stats and obvious shaving. We value our not received profit at amount of 150K+ EUR. This amount we could have received if sent traffic via market normal CPA and not had this cooperation with Freshbet.
2. Scummy attitude to partners with all this avoiding of deal negotiations, blaming us on everything possible occasion only not to discuss the deal, ignoring our requests for explanation of obvious fraud.
3. Blackmailing, threats and direct steal from us by blocking our accounts and stealing the traffic which was brought to them when all agreements where clear and approved by both parties.
RESULT: shitty affiliate program, the principles of which are expressed in shaving their current partners, ignoring their desire to discuss the cooperation so it can be beneficial for everybody, and then stealing their accounts and traffic.
While you are working, you have to be content with the crumbs, and then you become completely unwanted. We warn all colleagues in our business about working with them - even if it seems to you that everything is fine firstly it can all end very quickly and absolutely not to your profit or interests. There was a time at the beginning of cooperation when they also seemed to us like guys that worth trust and doing business together.
I represent sales dept from SEO traffic team and the reason I have started this thread is to share with you our work case with Freshbet casino brand for UK geo. This is one of the brands from the holding, which also includes Goldenbet and Mystake (with whom we also worked and received the same negative experience as with Freshbet).
Our cooperation with Freshbet partners started in Q2, 2023. Our brand sites have the top positions in Google. We have contacted a direct advertiser and quite quickly agreed on a very democratic hybrid deal for UK market, 70eur+40%RS with clear agreement to increase our deal after we send some traffic volume and if results are good. The deal itself, its nature (brand traffic), agreements where clear and approved by both parties.
After several months of what seemed a normal cooperation (as it seemed to us first), quality traffic (based on cut stats we were able to see) and normal payouts our request was quite clear to increase our commission up to 250+40%RS (which is absolutely standard for UK geo), but Freshbet manager refused to discuss and bargain on deal that we had. During that period we still continued to send traffic to their website and saw that month over month our payouts are on the same level that almost equals only CPA part of the deal. That is why we requested detailed stats.
It took more than 3 weeks and several ongoing requests to get at least somehow what you can call an advanced stats (still no full access), based on which we saw how much our players deposit, what percent of these deposits the casino earns and accordingly we calculated our RS part. We saw huge amount of over 1 000 000 EUR deposits with our payouts of 67k. It looks like straight and uncovered shave!
We were more than surprised by the fact that the casino earned 10% of the total amount of deposits. We work in this market not the first month and the not first year so have a clear understanding how much a casino can earn with a Curacao license in UK geo. We do believe it is not less than 25-35% from players deposits amount, but not 10%.
We clearly shared our disagreement with such attitude and what we believe to be fraud (with minimum amount of 100K not paid to us) with Freshbet manager, who always changed the topic, got lost for long period of time and than tried to blame us on false occasion like links not working, brand not listed and etc. In the end he decided to pass the ball to their CEO who led the communication further.
To make the long story short: none of our requests about profitable cooperation for both sides where seriously taken into consideration, we were proposed to thank Freshbet for the bone they are throwing to us and that it is not our merit, that they were obliged to shave us, no explanations regarding STRANGE stats, no readiness to increase the deal as we agreed at the beginning.
Only after that dumb and scummy attitude we than decided to send traffic on other brands.
Also, it was surprising for us to hear such position from Freshbet as on screenshot below. From the very beginning we provided traffic only on their website and helped them to defend their brand serp when their own domain was hidden from indexation. Even if to say we used their brand and rights than in this case it was for their brand best interests. I want to underline once more – we have never hidden the fact what kind of traffic we are sending to Freshbet and that we defend their brand serp and they were absolutely ok with it.
We suggested Freshbet CEO than to buy our site at a fixed price 100k eur (this price is based on our lost profit because of the shave from Freshbet side), but again no readiness to close our cooperation in business correct way was there. What was there for sure is 25k offer and lots of threats (legal actions, blocking the website, affiliate accounts blocked).
As the final of our case, we have an update already that our accounts with all the results of our 1-year business with them already are fully blocked (all 3 brands: Freshbet, Goldenbet and Mystake) and we don’t have access to them.
We share this case on the Internet to protect other teams and here are the reasons and our financial claim:
1. Unclear stats and obvious shaving. We value our not received profit at amount of 150K+ EUR. This amount we could have received if sent traffic via market normal CPA and not had this cooperation with Freshbet.
2. Scummy attitude to partners with all this avoiding of deal negotiations, blaming us on everything possible occasion only not to discuss the deal, ignoring our requests for explanation of obvious fraud.
3. Blackmailing, threats and direct steal from us by blocking our accounts and stealing the traffic which was brought to them when all agreements where clear and approved by both parties.
RESULT: shitty affiliate program, the principles of which are expressed in shaving their current partners, ignoring their desire to discuss the cooperation so it can be beneficial for everybody, and then stealing their accounts and traffic.
While you are working, you have to be content with the crumbs, and then you become completely unwanted. We warn all colleagues in our business about working with them - even if it seems to you that everything is fine firstly it can all end very quickly and absolutely not to your profit or interests. There was a time at the beginning of cooperation when they also seemed to us like guys that worth trust and doing business together.
