Glossary

Affiliate program

A brand's own partner scheme: it signs affiliates directly, tracks their referrals on its own platform and pays by CPA, RevShare or hybrid. No network sits in between, so the brand writes the terms and keeps the score.

Also called: partner program, in-house affiliate program, direct affiliate program, affiliate scheme.

An affiliate network aggregates offers from many advertisers and stands between you and them. An affiliate program is a single brand, or a group of brands under the same operator, doing the tracking, checking and paying itself. Most casinos and sportsbooks run one on third-party affiliate software: a sign-up form, a dashboard, tracking links, a manager. The same brand may also appear as an offer on networks, with different payouts and rules.

Going direct cuts out a margin, and also the middleman who could argue your case. The program counts your players, defines the revenue you are paid on, decides what counts as fraud and can usually change the terms with notice. The clauses that move money: the NGR formula, negative carryover, sole discretion over traffic quality, lifetime or limited RevShare, and what happens to your balance and your players if the account is closed.

Before sending volume, send a small batch and check that the registrations and deposits in your tracker match their dashboard, player by player and date by date. A program you cannot reconcile with your own data is a program you are trusting, not checking. Get the payment schedule and the minimum payout in writing too.