I don't know if I buy into your assessment of SBR's cash flow pre and post Points Era, Tricker. All of the actions that SBR has taken in the last 18 months or so tend to suggest that they're feeling as much of a pinch as anyone in this recession/crackdown on offshore gambling.


  • The Points system has undergone massive inflation since its implementation
  • The ability to buy sportsbook FPs/cash has been discontinued
  • The Bash was moved to CR to curtail attendance and costs associated
  • They used to hire Americans and start them at $30k/yr or more, now they hire Costa Ricans and start them at $4.25/hr
  • The SBR Pro program has morphed from being an elite membership tier to the basic membership tier, with non-Pros excluded from many things and their points now worth nothing, according to SBR John
  • They abandoned their stand-alone office in Escazú to move into the CRIS building
  • Rollovers introduced for Poker and Sportsbook
  • Transfer tax for moving points between posters and the restriction of points movement for non-Pros

Put all of this together and you paint a picture of a business that is having to be extremely deliberate in how it spends cash in order to remain solvent. This doesn't affect me one way or the other nor am I claiming to know exactly what SBR's financial situation is, but I think it bears on the original topic that the Points led to the community being overrun with deadbeats rather than serious gamblers.

In my opinion, the Points were a brilliant concept implemented way too late in the game; pre-UIGEA they would've crushed the other major affiliate sites' ability to attract new sign-ups, but now they just attract brokesters that have nothing more to do with their time than gamble virtual currency. Said brokesters actually disenfranchise serious gamblers from sticking around on SBR by flooding the board with nonsense and childishness and behaving in such a degenerate/addictive manner that decent people feel uncomfortable being lumped into the same group with them. I think SBR has finally realized this and we'll see them remove non-Pros from the points system altogether sometime in 2012, as well as restrict them from posting in volume or in certain subforums. Sadly I think it will be too late to resurrect or restore the quality of the community, but I hope I'm proven wrong about that.