08-12-2026 
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When I was first hired into the iGaming space in 2005, I was working for Casino City, a publisher and affiliate that is still thriving today. For those who are not familiar with how it works, iGaming operators (brands) have affiliate programs that manage relationships with affiliates like Casino City. My duties included pulling tracking stats from affiliate program backends, activating and managing dozens of affiliate program deals, and helping determine which program sent which bank wire.
- Affiliate tech is long overdue for change
- The trust gap in affiliate marketing
- Bad tracking, bigger payment woes
- A new era for affiliate marketing
- Blockchain reshaping affiliates
From what I understand, not much has changed in affiliate tracking since the mid-2000s, and while we have new payment methods such as crypto and stablecoins, they are still not being used to their full potential. Affiliate marketing may be one of the top revenue-driving channels for operators, but the technology that underpins it is outdated.
Trust between affiliates and operators has been a topic of contention for years. Could 2026 be the year when technology guarantees trust between the two parties? To find the answer, I spoke with several affiliates, an affiliate manager, a lawyer, and a blockchain solutions company at iGB L!VE 2026.
The first topic I examined was affiliate tracking and the pain points associated with it.
“You will never know if the tracking is being done right or not. You just have to trust the operator and whoever is running the affiliate program,” shared Luis Portela de Carvalho, Co-Managing Partner at Lektou and former Head of Legal for one of the biggest affiliates in the world.
iGaming consultant Adnan Maslo, with over 15 years of affiliate management under his belt, said that even though we have many tracking tools at our fingertips, we cannot always rely on the numbers.
“Some registrations simply fall through, and they don’t get tagged properly; it can be just a technical glitch sometimes. Unfortunately, with some programs, it could be intentional,” he said.
According to Sebastian Risse, Chief Revenue Officer of Move Up Media and formerly of Better Collective, we’re facing a “massive discrepancy” between the tracking material we have access to and “the transparency is not 100%.”
The lack of trust between iGaming affiliates and affiliate programs goes back at least several decades, especially when it comes to tracking. When I was with Casino City, my affiliate friends often lamented about “shaving,” meaning an affiliate program manipulates the tracking so the affiliate is credited with delivering fewer players than they should be.
Ian Sims, a former affiliate and Founder of Rightlander, an affiliate compliance solution, said there have always been an element of trust issues in the iGaming affiliate space.
“Even when I was an affiliate, there was constant talk about shaving. I always thought if someone offered me 30, 40, 45%, I was probably still only getting 15%,” he said.
On the other side of the equation, cookie stuffing—when an affiliate inserts their cookies into players’ browsers—results in tracking manipulation, with the fraudulent affiliate being credited instead of the honest affiliate who actually sent the traffic.
“An operator, they might not care where cookie stuffing might be happening. They’re like, ‘Look, if I get my players, I’m happy.’ It’s one of the topics that’s similar to shaving, where people know it exists, but they don’t want to talk about it,” shared John Wright, CEO of NousViz and with over 20 years of experience in affiliate marketing.
The consequence of broken tracking is payment discrepancies, a notorious trust issue, and a pain point for affiliates in the iGaming space.
“[Payment discrepancies] are usually not dealt with immediately,” said Maslo. “Whatever has been processed for that month goes out, and then we look into the discrepancies, dig deep, understand what’s going on, and adjust it on the next payment.”
“Sometimes, if the affiliate and operator do not agree, it’s a deal-breaker in some cases,” he explained.
Outdated payment rails can also result in confusion and unnecessary delays.
“With revenue share from an affiliate perspective, you were always trying to work out a lot of the time where the money was coming from because quite often the entities were hidden,” Sims recounted.
“What’s challenging with the payments is the time to get paid. Some programs might pay you 40 days after the month closing,” added Maslo.
“There are some programs that try to build a reputation and build closer relationships that pay quicker. Still, there is a lot of manual processing [and] verification of data, so the payments tend to take 15 days or longer,” he said.
Despite these historical challenges in tracking and payment, the affiliate marketing space is sitting on an amazing opportunity. New technologies are emerging with the promise of bringing modernization, greater transparency, and automation to the space.
“A lot of big companies here have developed fantastic softwares. I think that will be the key for these problems to be reduced in the future,” said Portela de Carvalho.
“There are new tools that are coming out that are becoming better and better,” added Maslo.
“Eventually, I think people are going to build tools that will actually solve [these pain points]. And AI is making this happen a lot faster,” pointed out Wright.
While artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly accelerated innovation in the iGaming space, blockchain-based solutions address the trust and payment issues that have plagued affiliate marketing for decades.
Taz Uddin, Senior Consultant at blockchain solutions company Teranode Group, talked about switching from cookie-based tracking to a more modern technology model.
“One we’re looking at is fingerprints. There’s the ability to now use blockchain technology that anchors the tracking data and what that will do is make it immutable, tamper resistant, truly auditable,” he explained.
Wright spoke about advancing payments with crypto and blockchain rails, saying this will “really drive things forward.”
Uddin agreed and added, “What we’re looking at is providing near instant settlements using USDC as our core anchor for the transfer of funds between affiliates and brands. What that does is speeds up settlement massively.”
Something I’ve always said when talking with iGaming professionals about blockchain technology is that while it may not be necessary yet, there will be a point when the market demands it. When it comes to blockchain and affiliate marketing, Wright summed it up perfectly.
“If you’re a really big affiliate, I think eventually the next conversation is going to be, I can’t do this unless you have a blockchain version in place where I trust that the data is transparent. I can see it, we can protect it behind a wall, but I know it’s not erasable and it’s the source of truth,” he said.
I loved working as an affiliate, and even though there were some trust issues, I still have affiliate manager friendships that are going strong. Affiliate marketing has always been one of the most powerful growth channels in iGaming, but its future depends on solving the trust issue. To do so, we must harness the latest technology to accelerate innovation and ensure a more transparent path forward.
Watch: AI is becoming a game-changer for iGaming
