Table of contents
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Affiliate Program
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Software | Commissions | Available in StatsDrone | API Support | Category |
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Who are the top 10 bookmakers that you should promote as a affiliate?
Should you work with Bet365 as an affiliate? Many affiliates do so that is a good sign and one reason to consider the Bet365 affiliate program. Let's take a look at the reasons for and against it.
Pros
Most recognized betting brand globally
Invests a lot into digital media and television adverts
Recommended by many players on review sites and forums
Cons
Overall there are really more pros than cons in working with a major brand like Bet365. The best way to test the waters is to look at other sports betting affiliate sites and see who promotes Bet365. Bet365 Partners is likely the largest sports betting affiliate program online.
It is hard to quantify who are the best affiliate programs to work with.
What should you know about betting on sports and the sports betting industry.
According to this stat from Statista that in 2020 in the US that 20% of men and 7% of women bet on sports.
Other articles suggest that basketball is the top sport to bet on in the United States and that 50% of bettors use DraftKings!
Simply put, you can conduct as much market research you want on a topic of sports however just remember that there is always an affiliate niche waiting for you. If you're going to become an affiliate then just pick a niche that you are very passionate about.
Who is better, DraftKings or FanDuel? Both brands have a major presence in the legal USA markets. Both brands invest heavily into SEO, digital PR and of course TV ads. It is hard not to turn on a sports station or listen to a podcast without hearing about DraftKings or FanDuel. DraftKings is currently considered the largest sports betting company in USA.
At the moment, DraftKings is considered the best sportsbook in America. Others would argue this title belongs to FanDuel but either way, it is a close race where these 2 brands have over 77% market share with BetMGM coming in 3rd place.
Fantasy sports has had an interesting history in the world of betting on sports. DFS stands for daily fantasy sports and some people differentiate between betting on sports and pure fantasy sports betting as 2 different things. DFS has been around a long time and I remember joining fantasy pools on Yahoo long before DraftKings and FanDuel became a thing.
DFS was considered legal as a form of betting because it falls under the classification of skillgames (games of skill if you are looking that up for references to wagering). DraftKings was founded by Jason Robins, Matthew Kalish, and Paul Liberman whom used to work for Vistaprint out of all companies. They were looking to build their fantasy league in time for baseball and happened to have caught the interest of the public.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are popular and since 2018, there has been a big increase in the number of operators offering betting on sports with Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.
What makes more money in online gambling? Casino, Sports Betting, Poker, Bingo or Lottery?
Out of the big 5 gambling verticals around, almost everyone in the iGaming industry acknowledges that online casino is the top revenue generator for both volume as well as player values.
You can more or less see CPA values on many operator affiliate program sites but I'll summarize the range of CPAs you can expect based on the vertical.
You need a tracking link in order to get credit when you make a sale. A sale is usually called an FTD or NDC and you can use tools like StatsDrone to track when you make your first commission.
When you login to any of your sports betting affiliate programs, you'll be shown a dashboard. Thankfully many of these partner programs will use an affiliate platform where everything looks the same. For example there are hundreds of affiliate programs using MyAffiliates software. You can find others such as NetRefer, ReferOn, Cellxpert, Income Access and many more. This makes it easier to find your tracking links.
When you do signup to an an affiliate program, you will find sections for campaigns, tracking links and marketing materials.
How do we rank sports betting affiliate programs?
Data is one of the biggest pain points that affiliate marketers have to deal with. It sounds like a basic concept but it is far from it. Some of the top affiliate programs do NOT provide data via an API which is beyond barbaric. It is 2024 and imagine that your affiliate program says you have to login to see your data and at best you can download it as a CSV.
Another important point regarding data is postback and dynamic variables for affiliates. This is referred to as S2S tracking and other people call this pixels. This is becoming more normal for affiliate programs and postbacks offer affiliates very advanced tracking that is nearly in real time. It is another data layer that can exist on top of what StatsDrone can get from affiliate programs.
Some of the best sports betting affiliate programs will provide live odds and various widgets you can use for your websites. Otherwise some of the top betting affiliates usually build their own ad tools (aka adtech) to power their sites.
Of course players expect a quality product but this is where putting on the player hat helps. Players know what a good bookmaker looks like in terms of experience, quality and service that goes beyond the signup bonus. Some of these bookmakers have been around for more than a decade and that is usually a good sign they might stay in business. Betting on sports is more than just allowing users to place bets. You can place bets at hundreds of random sportsbooks but you want to ensure you'll have a great experience and get paid in a timely manner when you do win.
Points 1 through 4 can be alright but the best sports betting affiliate programs don't just offer high commissions but they generate strong EPC for affiliates. EPC stands for earnings per click and this is one of the most important metrics any affiliate should pay attention to. A high CPA or high revenue share deal won't mean anything if the player value is low.
If you interview most sports betting affiliate sites, you'll get to know their story of how they got started. Most of these webmasters got started without any formal training. They learned things like search engine optimization (SEO), building websites from coding or using CMS like WordPress and they figured out to write the content needed to attract users. Since the history of online sportsbook sites, there really hasn't been many guidebooks on how to launch a betting affiliate site.
Here are some ideas of the types of sites and channels you can use for becoming one of the top sportsbook affiliates online.
The various types of online sports betting niche sites is never ending. You have tipster sites, fantasy sports, sports bonuses sites like free bets, you have bookmaker reviews and then of course you have every niche as a sport like basketball, hockey, football, golf, etc... You have very specific leagues around the world like NBA, NFL, MLB in America and you have Premier League in the UK, Champions League in europe and of course World Cup which is a global sporting event.
Types of sports betting affiliate companies
There are a few different types of affiliates which is something affiliate managers in the industry discuss and it can be helpful to you, the reader, to know what angle of the business you are interested in.
PPC is referred to as Pay Per Click and also referred to as performance marketing affiliation. Usually these affiliates are bidding on keywords in any traffic market place so they have to monitor their ad spend and measure it against their revenue. We have many PPC sports betting affiliate companies that are using StatsDrone to double verify that their postbacks are tracking and firing properly.
SEO stands for search engine optimization and the idea behind it is ranking usually in Google but it can include other search engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo and more. There are many SEO communities where inside there are some of the best sports betting affiliates around. Most of the StatsDrone affiliates see a direct correlation between ranking for keywords, clicks and revenue. They like to combine data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console and StatsDrone data.
I've literally seen some affiliates create podcasts just for the sake of link building and ranking a few episodes. They were blatantly covering topics like daily betting advice, football matches, and even fantasy sports leagues. Many of them were simply doing sportsbook reviews with the content being evergreen.
That said, there are other affiliates like Better Collective that have Playmaker that have a series of betting podcasts and they are using these channels to get more users and some of this does have a positive SEO benefit too.
Usually when you hear streaming affiliate in online gambling, you think about casino or slots streamers. There are clearly a lot of streamers that are focusing on sports and sports betting. You might not find the best sports betting affiliate companies in this space as they are usually focused on recording videos rather than streaming them.
Streaming affiliates can usually link back to their site and capture the user base through emails and sending traffic to their affiliate site.
We got a chance to chat with President of Betting Hero, Jai Maw.
"In an industry where digital product user experience is in constant question, and where products are considered commodities by consumers, the importance of adding value while ALSO providing a superior user experience is paramount for affiliates. We all know that the days of customer acquisition being a primary objective are gone, as acquisition alone is simply not enough. Affiliates need to prioritize customer retention, and development equally but arguably at a higher level than customer acquisition in order to foster long-standing operator partnerships. Afterall, we should always strive to be aligned with our partners' most critical objectives.
With an absence of consumer loyalty across the industry, affiliates are uniquely positioned to develop truly engaging products that supplement an operator's own customer journeys in an effort to better retain, and develop customers at scale."
This is definitely a sensitive topic because many of the top sports betting affiliate programs have put restrictions in their terms and conditions that will prohibit affiliates from advertising links on social media. What I'd suggest is to follow best practices of the larger established affiliates and although you are required to do your research and due diligence, you can assume some of them have done this. Again, this isn't legal advice and it is your responsibility to know the rules in your jurisdiction.
Of course you would bet on sports using your mobile phone. For some people, the idea of doing it any other way seems crazy. However mobile betting only became a thing after 2014 as more people were using their phones for sports betting, fantasy sports leagues and of course online casino games.
According to various articles, over 60% of website traffic is done through a mobile device and there are over 4 billion active mobile internet users. This means that likely more than 60% of your traffic to your affiliate sites will come from mobile. This means your sites should be optimized for mobile first if you want to have higher conversions and betting search traffic.
There are many apps that have online betting services. Some of the apps are sportsbooks themselves and a few of course offer daily fantasy sports. Some of the apps happy to be affiliate sites themselves as they are either sports related, bookmaker review related, live odds feeds or some other type of useful app for betting options. What you'll find inside here are tracking links (as in an affiliate link) where when you click on it as a player, if a successful deposit is made, then you'll earn a commission depending on the commission type negotiated.
Betting exchanges are very popular and add a social element to it. Betfair was one of the first operators to launch a betting exchange. These betting exchanges are so popular that there are numerous sites dedicated to reviewing them.
There are quite a few commission types you'll see available to promote online sportsbooks. They are as follows:
Revenue share is the most common and preferred commission type. Revenue share can usually generate more long term player value compared with CPA. Just keep in mind your revenue share is calculated as a percentage of net revenue or rather net winnings. Different affiliate programs will use different words for net winnings but they usually all related to your total commissions earned. Every program has their own calculation of how they determine your total commissions and that is something that StatsDrone makes it easier to know how much you've been paid across all the channels.
If you refer a player that happens to join the brand's VIP club then you'll usually make more money with revenue share compared with CPA so this is the major downside to CPA commissions.
With CPA, you're getting the up front payment for a depositing player which can be known as FTD or NDC.
When it comes to CPA payments, they are helpful for the short term but come at the expense of long term value. Revenue share commissions can typically be for life and in many instances they can last for many years.
Most affiliates prefer commissions with net revenue over CPA or they prefer a hybrid.
Sub affiliates is a rare commission type and is associated with master affiliates or affiliate networks. Affiliate networks usually take a small cut of the total revenue of the business and is something not felt or seen by the sub affiliates in question.
The sports betting industry has been around quite some time. One of the earliest online sports betting sites have been Sportingbet, Bet On Sports, WSEX, 5Dimes, Bodog, BetUS and Bet365. Many of them had their sportsbook affiliate programs live offering revenue share and CPA for any type of affiliate with relevant traffic. Any major sports betting events are ones that are considered as major revenue drivers like the Super Bowl, World Cup, Champions League and more.
The betting business attracts a mix of sports enthusiasts, iGaming investors, affiliates and operators. There are dedicated communities to the betting affiliate industry.
There are 2 main events that cover sports betting and they are iGB Affiliate and SBC Events. In fact, SBC Summit is one of the main events in the online gambling industry that doesn't just focus on casino but does have a strong contingent of online betting companies.
Not everyone is a fan of affiliate networks and we'll have to get into the pros and cons. If you're reading this and not familiar with what an affiliate network is then just understand this. They are kinda like a broker that works with all the affiliate programs. The network's goal is to get as many affiliates in their system so they have the combined strength like one giant super affiliate. The benefit for the sports betting affiliate is that they get to work with a single program and be part of a bigger group. Likewise an affiliate program has the ability to work with one organization that has hundreds of affiliates with 1000s of websites to get promoted on.
Most of the affiliate networks that offer betting affiliate programs will usually have online casinos and other gambling brand products to promote.
Managing multiple affiliate logins and tracking all the payments from your sports betting affiliate programs can be tedious. This is one of the top reasons why affiliate networks are gaining in popularity.
Most affiliate programs will offer CPA where some advertise it on the affiliate program pages and others don't mention it but it is something you have to ask for.
There are quite a few affiliate companies that have done well as considered as some of the best sport betting affiliate companies around. Here's a short list of companies and websites worth considering:
There are of course other smaller affiliate sites but many of them are niche. You don't need to be the biggest to make a good income as a sports betting affiliate.
Everyone's favourite words and phrases as a betting affiliate: compliance and legal. Yay!
Did you know that many of the sports betting affiliate programs you work with will use compliance tools to ensure you are compliant?! Believe it or not, this is a real thing. Software companies like Rightlander will scan the web to find compliance issues.
Examples of compliance issues:
I know, none of that sounded fun. Believe it or not, keeping your data, bonuses and reviews up to date won't just keep the compliance people away but it will help you convert better. Players cannot stand reviews that are not kept up to date so this is important for everyone.
What are some of the CPAs you can get from a sportsbook affiliate program?
Many programs advertise their CPAs can range in the $50 to $200 range but the real answer is that it depends on the markets you work with. For example CPA payments for sports betting players will be higher in a country like Canada vs a country like Malta.
What is a better commission plan for betting affiliates, CPA or revenue share?
Usually affiliates care about revenue share as it can make more money over the life of a player. That said there are many bigger affiliates that opt for a hybrid deal of CPA and revenue share.
What is the difference between offshore betting affiliate programs vs licensed sports betting affiliate programs?
The term offshore sportsbooks likely originated in the days where Costa Rica, Antigua and Curacao were the go to jurisdictions where companies would get an online gaming license. Today there are numerous crypto focused betting sites that at not quite called offshore but some refer to as the grey or blackmarkets. Licensed betting affiliate programs, as the name implies, means the brands operating in that country have a license and ideally a localized one. This can include jurisdictions like United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada (Ontario), Spain, Italy and Greece to name a few.
What sports should I focus on for my affiliate site?
You can focus on an underserved niche but ideally you should focus on a sport that you're more passionate about. The reason being that you'll likely do content production where it doesn't feel like work. Do something you're passionate about and think about ways of differentiating yourself from the other betting affiliate sites out there.
Some of the more obscure sports affiliate niches around include Aussie rules football betting, MMA betting, Brazilian jiu-jitsu betting, horse races, NFL games, ice hockey and other sports events.
Do I need a degree to become a gambling affiliate?
Absolutely not. Having a degree doesn't hurt whether it is in content, marketing, business or entrepreneurship. That said, most of the people you'll find as betting affiliates don't have any formal training in the work that they do.
Do I need a license to be an affiliate in USA?
If you want to promote legal online sportsbooks like DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM, then in some cases you might need a license to run your affiliate business. There are more affiliate networks that are offering their services as a means of helping affiliates get their license.
How do I get paid as an affiliate?
You can receive your payments in cheques (checks), ewallets like PayPal, Neteller and Skrill or by bank wire. Many new programs are offering various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to get paid. It depends on what the affiliate program does in question as some are crypto focused. Overall when it comes to commission types, a percentage of net revenue is what is paid out in commissions. That is the revenue generated is what is calculated that contributes to your revenue share commissions.
How do I get live odds data or widgets on my site?
There are some providers that give live sports odds as a service. Some will do it for free but may include a link or they might offer this through their affiliate network. Otherwise many odds service providers charge a fee to use their odds data on your site. You can find these on many betting apps and odds comparison sites too.
Why won't an affiliate program give me a CPA deal?
Quite often, CPA deals are negotiated and awarded on a case by case basis. Your affiliate manager will usually decide if you qualify and they prefer to work with established affiliates where they know their traffic. The reason why you need approval is because programs have experienced CPA fraud in the past and they don't allow this commission type automatically. If you are a new affiliate, it is nice to get a CPA deal in place as a fast reward to earn money now so you can use that revenue to invest back into your business.
What are good tipster sites and services?
There are quite a few that are prominent in the betting space such as Betting Gods, Tipstop.co, AI Stats and Tipstrr to name a few.
How long does it take to start earning money as a sports betting affiliate?
It depends on how fast you can generate traffic and if that traffic is converting. For example you can do articles about an upcoming sports event which can generate a spike in traffic but if the traffic doesn't care about betting on sports, then you'll miss out on conversions. Likewise articles talking about odds for a game, might generate more interest. Video related content might have an easier time helping you earn money but focus on what you do and enjoy the best.
What are other iGaming verticals that a sports betting affiliate would do?
Some affiliates have casino and online poker as part of their gambling sites. Some will have a separate betting site for each gambling vertical. You'll see in prominent sites that they'll have more than one online gambling product to promote. Our most popular page on the site is our casino affiliate programs listings.
Players that bet on sports are also into poker (see our poker affiliate programs page) and to some extent lottery as well (see our lottery affiliate programs page).
Where can I learn SEO for ranking as a betting affiliate?
Great question. You can search by looking through all the past guests on the Affiliate BI podcast. The podcast has numerous SEO experts that share evergreen content along with trending topics that are relevant for that year like 2024 and beyond.
How do I decide what is the best affiliate program to work with?
Choosing an affiliate program can be easy and difficult. Many affiliate managers will email your site asking to join their partner program. What I recommend that most affiliates consider is to look at the brands promoted by their competition. Use this info to decide who does have the best brand placements which is a signal of who has the best affiliate program around. You can search for any keywords and find any sports betting affiliates to see the brands they feature and the rankings they give them within their site.
Should I choose online casino, fantasy sports betting or being a sports betting affiliate?
Follow your passion, if you like casino games, DFS, betting exchanges or regular sports betting then pick what you like the best. Your work won't feel like work.
Should I choose an affiliate network over an affiliate program?
There are some pros and cons of using any affiliate network. The main pro is that you'll have one affiliate manager and one payment method. Usually they'll help you negotiate better CPA and revenue share deals and help you get exclusive offers for your affiliates.
Why do players like casino games so much?
Most bookmakers will have an online casino attached. Once you place your bets, you're not gambling anymore and some players want to put their money in action so will often consider casino games, online slots and other betting options for wagering.
Is horse racing popular?
Horse racing is one of the oldest forms of betting that goes back hundreds of years especially in the United Kingdom. Sports bettors today still will place bets on races and will even put money online to be on racebooks. There are some racebooks here and there but overall you'll find there are less options for racebook betting affiliate programs.
Is William Hill Affiliate one of the best affiliate programs around?
William Hill as a brand is considered good but you as the affiliate should research to see if the William Hill brand is featured on the bigger affiliate sites. Also if they are featured on the larger sports betting affiliate portals then take it with a grain of salt. It doesn't mean they will treat smaller affiliates well. This is why it is advised to network at some of the sports betting affiliate conferences and follow forums like GPWA for example.
Is the 888 sports betting affiliate program trustworthy?
888 has been around a very long time and simply put, you can always find affiliates promoting their casino and sportsbook.
What makes a great affiliate program?
If you can make friends and network with other betting affiliates, many affiliates can be friendly and helpful. They'll tell you which brands they like, which ones convert the best, deliver the best player values and this is where you'll get your answer of what makes for a very good affiliate program.
Where can I find new betting affiliate programs?
Inside StatsDrone, we are often adding the newest affiliate programs around. Inside you'll get notified of new betting affiliate programs as they are added and discovered.
What are the 5 most popular sports betting affiliate programs?
Geez, tough questions and putting me on the spot!
For sure I cannot say this is conclusively the best sports betting affiliate programs but at least they are some of the most popular ones.