888 Holdings is a $1.5billion company built on spam. Last year, prior to their CSFB underwritten IPO I noticed that a large portion of the comment spam on my own site was from them and called them up in their gangster den in Gibraltar (largely for a laugh).

Their share price is holding up nicely, after all, blog spamming etc. is far too geeky and seems too trivial for people to listen to. I would argue that 888's revenues, and certainly their initial competitive edge, are significantly dependent on spam. Recently one of their own industry organizations, the International Gaming Affiliate Marketing Initiative, IGAMI, has blacklisted them because of spamming.

If this had been a company employing the same techniques in traditional marketing, their IPO would have been pulled and some of its employees would likely have ended up in jail. But no investigative journalist has so far covered the case.

This is from a report by the IGAMI:

"iGAMI has been meticulously investigating and tracking unscrupulous marketing activities since September of 2005 conducted by and/or for the online casino - Casino on Net / 888; which is currently listed on the London Stock Exchange – FTSE - 888 HOLDINGS PLC.

Our investigation indicated that this casino has engaged in and benefited directly from unethical marketing techniques leading up to, during, and after their floatation late last year.

We discovered numerous instances of blog and forum spamming* where domains owned and operated by Cassava Enterprises were being impermissibly promoted on unsuspecting websites. We have further discovered thousands of domains; which were and continue to this day to employ a technique referred to as scraping**.

Based on these findings and 888’s failure to address the issues in a comprehensive and timely manner the iGAMI Advisory Board voted to place the 888/Casino On Net affiliate program and its casino clients onto an industry blacklist."

The International Gaming Affiliate Marketing Initiative