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Why regulation has helped not hindered affiliates in New Jersey
Adam Small, of PocketFives and NJ Online Gambling, says red tape isn’t always a bad thing
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I’m involved with two websites that promote online gambling in New Jersey: PocketFives and NJ Online Gambling. While many affiliates have shied away from this market due to, among other things, tighter restrictions on who’s allowed to be a marketer, we’ve fully embraced what we believe is the best path forward for the USA.
Without question there are downsides to a regulated environment. There are certainly many fewer affiliates in NJ than in unregulated markets, and overall much less has been invested into affiliate marketing in NJ than elsewhere. Operators have been forced, at times, to pay more for less because they have fewer partners to choose from.
On the other hand, affiliates in many markets can cause massive problems for both players and operators, and the vast majority of those problems are not issues in the regulated New Jersey affiliate market.
An example of a regulation in New Jersey that improves affiliate marketing for players is that affiliates in New Jersey are responsible for not targeting self-excluded gamblers with e-mail campaigns.
In fact, affiliates can be banned from working with an operator – sometimes from the entire NJ market – for even small instances of impropriety. This protects players from having to work their way through a jungle of dishonest marketing materials just to find the information they’re looking for, and it protects operators from concerns about affiliates not upholding the standards necessary for this industry to be allowed to exist legally in a US state.
As far as being an affiliate in this type of market goes, I personally prefer not having to deal with unscrupulous competition and knowing we’re part of the long term solution, not the problem, for online gambling in the USA.