GOLDEN PALACE: the shame and the stupidity

Between late 1999 and mid 2000, the Golden Palace casino group stole substantial sums of money from participators in an extraordinarily poorly-conceived promotional campaign. Having sustained extreme losses, Golden Palace took the decision to claw back funds by simply voiding many players' winnings and not paying. In the end, some players were paid, some negotiated partial settlements and others simply gave up and left the online gambling scene, seriously disillusioned.

This was the first, and to date probably biggest, online casino scandal. Certainly, it involved the largest sums of money ever stolen by one casino group.

The Golden Palace fun and games did not end with this disgraceful affair; in more recent times, they've masterminded an advertising campaign based on performing outrageous stunts of various kinds, then sitting back and waiting for the journalists to get on the phone. The modus operandi of this campaign is twofold:

1) Buying various bizarre items on Ebay, for extortionate prices - such as grilled cheese sandwiches and celebrity pregnancy tests.

2) Hiring members of the public to perform acts of sabotage at major supporting events - most notoriously, the appearance of a Golden Palace employee at the 2004 Olympic Games, disrupting the Mens' Synchronized 3 Metre Springboard Finals and tarnishing the memory of what should have been a happy occasion for everyone involved, particularly the participants. This incident led to Golden Palace's inclusion in the Casinomeister rogue section.



In short, there is little that is too tacky or repugnant for the Golden Palace publicity campaign strategists to keep off their shortlist of potential marketing gimmicks.

Their most recent strategem would appear to be "name buying" - acquiring the rights to name a child via Ebay auction:

TRENTON, N.J., May 25, 2005

With their latest eBay purchase, Internet casino GoldenPalace.com is well on their way to overtaking the name "Smith" in the telephone book. The headline-grabbing casino spent $15,000 to name another child GoldenPalace.com.

The bouncing baby boy's official name is GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman, and he was born a healthy seven pounds, ten ounces at 2:28 PM on May 19, 2005.

GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman is the latest in a series of eccentric advertising campaigns by the Internet casino. Other babies also share the casino's name, as well as Tennessee resident Terri Illigan, 33, who sold her naming rights on eBay for $15,199, and subsequently changed her name to GoldenPalace.com to help support her five children.

"We congratulate the new parents of GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman," said GoldenPalace.com CEO Richard Rowe. "We wish them and their beautiful baby boy all the best. You can expect more baby-naming in the future as I am sure other people will follow suit and be looking to auction off the naming rights to their children."

Setting the standard in marketing creativity, GoldenPalace.com has devised some of the most exciting and outrageous advertising campaigns in the past few years. Recently, items such as the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Britney Spears' Pregnancy Test, and Pope Benedict XVI's previously-owned VW Golf have garnered extensive worldwide media attention for the casino.

SOURCE: Kaleici Leisure.

It seems that there are no depths to which Golden Palace, perpetrator of the biggest online casino scandal in the short history of the industry, will not sink.

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