New YouWin owners to re-pay owed affiliates

YOUWIN.COM, the new incarnation of the Uwin.com sports betting site launched this month, will re-launch its affiliate programme this month and has agreed to re-pay affiliates after an earlier programme shutdown that left affiliates owed money for recruited players.

The sportsbook is under a new management team led by chief executive Erik Ahlberg since a takeover of owners WinUnited early last year, and re-branded the company as Uwin in November. It re-launched the site as YouWin.com this week, after earlier transferring to a Finsoft platform from one supplied by Austrian provider Scaraboo.

Player accounts were transferred to the new platform, but the affiliate programme was shut by the then marketing manager, who has since been sacked, leaving affiliates out of pocket.

New marketing manager Will Lytle said: “I joined six weeks ago and realised that the situation with affiliates was not in a good state. We need to honour our contracts with affiliates, one because it’s the right thing to do, and two because we need good relations with affiliates to succeed. A manager made some bad decisions, and we accept the consequences.”

Lytle entered into talks with the Gambling Affiliates Union (GAU) regarding the old accounts, and have agreed a deal under which affiliates will receive all outstanding payments in full, and under the terms of the time that players were recruited.

Payments for any future players recruited will be made under the terms of a new affiliate programme that YouWin will launch later this month.

GAU chairman Paul White said: “When this company decided to rebrand and come back in to the affiliate market they could easily have taken the route of many other programmes and cheated hundreds of affiliates out of thousands of pounds. Choosing the ethical option of paying all outstanding earnings and continuing to do so under the terms and conditions that were in place when they closed down is very promising, and I believe shows how importantly You Win intend to treat their affiliates in the future.

“Once the merger of all affiliates is concluded and You Win’s affiliate programme is up and running, the Gambling Affiliates Union will welcome them on to our White List.”

White referred to the GAU’s ‘White List’ of affiliate programmes that have agreed to abide by GUA arbitration, that includes Gala Coral, Eurobet and Sky and can be read in full here.

As reported on EGRmagazine.com, UWin chose payments business Neteller as its payments processor last week.