Interview with Vikrant Bhargava PartyGaming CEO (PRTY.L)

Why do you think PartyPoker.com has been so successful? What keeps you above all the other online poker rooms?

PartyPoker.com has done many things different to differentiate itself. Marketing for example is more visual then other poker rooms, thanks to being the first to advertise on television. We have also been very innovative with the aspects of the poker room. We were the first to do many things that are now commonplace. With the PartyPoker.com Million tournament, we were the first to have an offline tournament where the qualifying was done online. This was a big step in our growth. We also were the first poker room to introduce affiliates to outsource our marketing efforts.

Where would you like to see Party Poker in 5 years?

I would like us to be bigger than we are now and to continue to maintain our market leadership position. I would like us to be the clear leader in all of the different countries where we enter. In 5 years there are also likely to be many more channels to play through. Mobile gaming is likely to be big. I think it is still a couple years before it gets to significant size, but when it does, I want PartyPoker.com to be there in the front. If we are not present in the mobile channel in three years, then I will be concerned.

If you could choose, what would you want Party Poker’s reputation be?

Safest, secure, caring (for customers), honest, fun, and easy.

What sort of charity work does PartyPoker do?

Most of the charity done is event driven. For example we donated to the Tsunami Relief, and also to Hurricane Katrina. A trust set up by the PartyGaming founders recently gave eight hundred thousand Pounds to the local hospital here in Gibraltar. I believe it was the largest ever in Gibraltar; we did it because when we came here we felt that their healthcare needed help. We want to help every community we are present in. We wish to be doing a lot more and you will see us more active in this space.

Affiliates

How valuable are affiliates to PartyPoker and the Online Poker business in general?

They have been extremely valuable to the PartyPoker.com’s growth. We view affiliates as partners, and understand their worth.

What advice would you give to someone coming into the affiliate world?

I would tell them that results will not come overnight. You can’t put up a website and expect traffic from all over. But with hard work success is guaranteed.

There have been some complaints with PartyPoker.com’s affiliate program in the past, what was done, and what will be done to insure a Win-Win situation between PartyPoker.com and its affiliates?

With the creation of PartyPartners.com, we came up with a unique brand just for them. We are committed to building it better for affiliates with a wide range of tools to help them. We understand that we may have made some mistakes in the past by not communicating as well as we should have. The decisions may not have been communicated or implemented in the ideal way, but the intentions have always been good and for the good of most affiliates.

As we all know, Rakeback has been a very touchy issue with PartyPoker.com, what is your opinion on the whole fiasco?

My opinion on the problem with rakeback is this: too many affiliates try to show rakeback as a benefit to players when in fact they were only using Rake back as a way of stealing players often belonging to other affiliates. These rakeback affiliatss would use the chat window to tell people about the deals they could get for them if they signed up under them. The players would then attempt to make a new account usually with incorrect information, under the affiliate. The problem with this was that the player would violate our terms of service, and the original affiliate who did the real work by bringing in the player lost out. Affiliates who were pushing rakeback were not bringing new players to the market, they were just getting credit for players brought in by others and that is not what the affiliate program is set up for.

Here at PartyGaming we focus on player retention and want to keep the players happy. We focus on bringing in new players for current players to play with. Rakeback spoils and confuses the retention process and in the end hurts the affiliates who does it right. We decided to take a stand on the rakeback issue. We would get many emails saying I can bring you this many players if you give me this percentage, so we told them “If all you are looking for is a discount, then PartyPoker.com is not the place for you”.

Online Poker in General

Where do you see the poker craze going in the next 5 years?

There are still a lot of people who haven’t played poker online or even played poker at all. So I expect to see more and more players playing poker online.

Back in 2001, there were a lot more serious poker players who came into online poker, now the new players are here mostly for entertainment purposes. In December of 2005 we had the highest total of new player sign ups in the history of Party Poker. People are spending an increasing amount of time on the internet, and a lot of that is for entertainment. As long as poker continues to be a part of entertainment (something it has been for many decades now), it will continue to be big online. At Party Gaming we want to be the preferred platform for people’s online entertainment. You can expect to see a lot coming from Party Gaming in the future.

How long do you think it will be until an Online Poker Room calls it home in America?

I think it will be awhile before the United Stats passes the legislation to have Online Poker. I do not think it is a matter of “IF”; it’s only a matter of “WHEN”.

What advice would you give to someone who is interested in working in the Online Poker Industry?

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be in the business. It is just like any other ecommerce but more fun and exciting. You also don’t have to play poker to work in the industry, we don’t have many poker players that work for us, but we have a lot of smart people in the company. Our Poker Room Manager is the only person in the company who can be called a poker professional.

And last but not least, can you shed some light on what’s going on with EmpirePoker.com?

EmpirePoker.com was bought by PartyGaming, and we are working on putting together an affiliate program for it. The old empire trackers no longer work, but we would love for you to continue promoting them. We will have a portal put together in three to four weeks, until then you can contact us and get a tracker sent to you now.

I would really like to thank Vikrant on behalf of myself and PokerAffiliateWorld.com. He is an extremely intelligent businessman and is one of the reasons PartyGaming Plc. has grown to be the industry leader that they are today

Discuss the PartyPoker.com Afiliate Program in the Party Poker Affiliate Forum