Facebook gets greedy
Gambling and Facebook

Facebook demands $10k a month for gambling fan pages and introduces a $30,000 minimum ad spending limit.

According to a correspondence leaked on gaming forum Casino Affiliates, Facebook demands $10,000 per month for gambling-related fan pages. The stock-exchange listed firm also introduced a minimum $30,000 limit for running a gambling-related ad campaign.

Facebook made pretty good money with running ads for poker, online blackjack and sports betting. Now it seems the social media firm wants all business for itself after announcing its interest in real-money gambling.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company also sent letters to online casino bonus programs and other gambling-related fan pages saying that they have to pay a monthly fee of $10,000 just for having the page. Of course nobody is willing to pay that money.

Facebook’s latest actions can affect a lot of people. Imagine you run a community of blackjack fans. You share news, give tips, comment on strategies, all the usual things a fan page would do. According to Facebook, your page might fall into the restricted gambling category, so be ready to fork out $10K a month or dismiss the page. What, you did not make any money from your page? In that case, try to convince Facebook. Good luck with that.

What is really disturbing about the latest Facebook actions that they are not backed up by any guidelines or Terms and Conditions on the website. They do mention gambling and there are restrictions for both ads and pages related. However, there is absolutely no mentioning of a fee for having a fan page, or a minimum fee for advertising.

So, why is all this? Facebook needs money. Most developed markets use the mobile FB platform that is not showing ads, therefore does not make money. The firm desperately tries to find new sources for revenue.

Facebook wants to go big in online gambling. Their stock price is down, far away from previous expectations. But if they can convince the markets that they will be a serious player in real-money online gambling, share prices might begin to climb up again.