Comment: ‘Nobody asked me but….’ - September 2007  

Mickey Charles, president and CEO of The Sports Network (pictured right) assesses the current situation for online gaming affiliates in the US. Generally, online gaming sites pay affiliates, who can be literally anyone - from individuals with their own website or companies in non-gaming sectors - a commission for referring players to their websites.

“It appears that the US government, the Department of Justice (DOJ) specifically...as in located in St. Louis, has a fishing licence that does not include guppies, goldfish or other small piscatorial members of the waterways be they streams, lakes, rivers, ponds or vast oceans. Therefore, trolling about does not include anything as mundane as fly-casting, just deep sea efforts. Consequently, affiliates of major wagering operations offshore and/or located out of the US have not been targeted as yet and are not on anyone's radar screen, not even as an undetectable blip so minor as to be considered an errant fly that found its way into the control room. The DOJ has truly targeted, usually without justification, only those perceived to be fish of a greater size for their trophy room(s) using a law that is certain to be repealed in the years ahead.
Affiliates have their own conferences and conventions, albeit that the atmosphere prevailing within the gaming industry at present has caused them to retreat somewhat and fashion their earning power in much more of a clandestine fashion than returning to Amsterdam, making travel plans for Montreal, Macau, Costa Rica or other watering holes where deals are to meant to be made with sites focused on gambling and located outside the borders of the US. These folks are not on the 10, 20, 50, 100 or 500 most wanted lists of the DOJ. There is no value in going after a lone purveyor of links that has both a day and night time job to supplement the paltry income achieved from being an affiliate in many cases. That, of course, raises the protective screen for the "super affiliates" that are being sent tens of thousands of dollars weekly as commissionable payments for their references, links, promotion, marketing and advertising skills exhibited on respective sites.
When you think you are going after John Dillinger, Al Capone or Bonnie and Clyde, you do not stop to arrest anyone that has either driven through a red light or was in the process of emptying the cash register at the local candy store. All of these folks are, apparently, considered "secondary marketing vendors" and make poor targets for politically or otherwise ambitious law enforcement personnel. How can the DOJ portray Harriet Shapiro, a housewife with a site in Brooklyn, or Tom Dunn, a construction worker in Iowa who heard about putting gambling ads on his site and getting commission payments for anyone actually clicking to the offshore bookmaker, as part of some dark, money laundering, international James Bond or Jason Bourne stratagem to create a cabal designed to expand a gambling conspiracy worldwide?
But, what if you threw a party and no one came, certainly not the guests that were most important for the frivolities and networking planned? Dull would follow. The gaming operators are not lining up to purchase airline tickets or make hotel reservations and the affiliates are likely not to indulge in any nepotism among themselves to determine the best sources for revenue flows. Even the DOJ is sending fewer and fewer people to these confluences of small fish despite the expanded Big Brother mentality of the White House and checking everything from phone calls to dietary selections under the pretense of labelling the target a potential "terrorist contact of some sort." Enter the obtuse and insidious charge of money laundering, the governmental (DOJ) accusation without substance but one that sounds and looks real good when seeking complaints, indictments and/or just voicing preparatory incriminations.
Affiliates may, or may not, be at risk. Right now, it does not seem as if they are because the DOJ net has no room for them, the holding pen was made for apparent and perceptible denizens of the deep, and taking a bite out of any of them is certainly not fulfilling for these seemingly ordained keepers of the sanctity of the nation. When you live in a nation where the person occupying the highest office in the land does not listen to the people that put him there, despite his promise to do so, why would any legal extensions of that mentality do otherwise in the face of the gambling opportunities that pervade our country at present - lotteries, casinos, Indian reservations, horse racing, office pools (March Madness and Super Bowl) and much more?
There is a law in NYC against spitting on the sidewalk. When was the last time you saw anyone arrested for doing so, or jay walking? But, stalking a bank? Sure. In the first instance, no harm, no foul; in the second, the supposition that something bad is about to happen. It did not, but there is the "maybe" coupled with "we have to earn our paycheck today so arrest someone," mentality, sort of like the end of the month surge in traffic violations that had been ignored until then.
The affiliates out there are being invited to a number of parties, the same ones that they have been attending for a few years now. But, what if the most important people promised for each of them, the regulars that used to attend all the time, opted not to show up? And, more importantly, what if the governmental law enforcement officials continued their witch hunt and expanded it to the hobgoblins, leprechauns and gremlins that have been living in relative obscurity so far? What if someone with little else to do decided to cast a fishnet into the nearest pond instead of the ocean?
The specter of all that conjures up a situation that would make The Spanish Inquisition a minor occurrence in the history books. If you should see the government seeking a fishing licence that gives them greater latitude than they have shown to date and you are an affiliate by definition in the world of gambling you might want to hang our your own ‘Gone Fishing’ sign.”

Mickey Charles
mcharles@sportsnetwork.com
President & CEO
The Sports Network

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