I think people tend to forget how rakeback started. It was never something that sites paid directly to players. For bringing players to them, they paid affiliates a share of the rake the player generated, and some affiliates chose to give some (often most) of that back to players to attract them. It makes sense for the sites because that way they don't spend as much money on marketing. One of the downsides, though, is players who didn't sign up through an affiliate, or signed up through an affiliate that didn't offered rakeback, would then be upset because they didn't, and couldn't, get rakeback.
And then there have been sites who have given their players rewards in different forms directly, which allowed them to do more targeting. This makes sense for the sites if they can use it as a tool to attract players from elsewhere, get players to play more, etc. Most sites tend to tier these rewards on volume, and the argument has been made that this makes the games tougher.
What seems a little more odd to me is when sites offer straight up flat rakeback direct to all players. But I guess this is just an evolution, where sites decided that rather than have players sign up through affiliates, they'd just as soon have them sign up directly, so they gave them rakeback either way. Or new sites would start up and figure they had to pay rakeback to compete with the competition. Players notice rakeback much more than they do when a site charges 1-2% more or less rake.
So to the question a few posts ago, of course everyone would like 25% off their rake. But it has to make sense for the site, as well. To be worth their while, they need to regain that 25% in increased play, more players, or better customer loyalty/retention - or a combination of all of those. Is that what would happen? I don't think any of us know the answer to that.
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Originally Posted by sam1chips
What does the quality of the games look like if GP decides to give out rakeback (along with their freerolls and overlays) and drastically decreases their Facebook advertising, which would lead to less new players coming in?
The other options is to remove the freerolls and overlays and replace it with rakeback. My opinion is that the freerolls and overlays would bring in more of a new player pool than rakeback would.
People often forget about these things when they complain about a site not offering rakeback. A site is going to spend X% of their rake on marketing & promotions. There is direct advertising, freerolls, rewards programs, rake races, revenue share to affiliates, and other ways they can spend this money - every site does it differently. And of course "X%" will look different at each site.
Is "X%" high enough at Global? Are they spending that money the best way they can? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know the answer is more complex than some people seem to think.