Loads of affiliates love Dragons' Den, so I'm sure many will have watched with interest as two gaming affiliates appeared in the Den and walked away with £200,000 worth of investment from Theo.

Their business, Gaming Alerts, delivers updates and offers from Poker, Bingo and Betting sites to users' computers through an application that sits on the desktop. They likened their service to comparison sites like Confused.com, and if they genuinely are able to deliver comparisons on odds for certain bets to their users that would be a very useful service, although I rather got the feeling that it might be more to send out puff pieces and press release type information. But that may be unfair so could be worth downloading to check it out.

I think it would have to offer something genuinely compelling for any great number of people to download and install it, and then continue to use it. And making me consume information through a desktop application seems a slightly backward looking step. But with that kind of capital, maybe they can invest in it enough to deliver really useful content - although I'm not sure they actually said what they wanted the money for (well I'm sure they said it, but I don't think it made the final edit).

What was more interesting was the reaction of some of the Dragons to the ideas behind the pitch. Duncan was incredulous at the idea of people playing Bingo online. James Caan wasn't persuaded that kind of returns mention were possible. It's kind of amusing to see how ignorant even these successful entrepreneurs are about the possibilities of this industry.

Labels: dragons' den