How we are paid, and what the money buys

01

Every link in the ranking is bought space

Each entry standing in the ranking block is a paid placement, and this site is owed a fee once a reader opens an account through one of them. That is the entire commercial arrangement, stated in the first line rather than at the foot of a page. No entry reaches the block by merit, by age, by size or by any quality a reader might assume a ranking measures. The slots are sold.

The fee is a commission on a new account, not a payment for a click. A reader who follows a link, looks around and leaves costs the operator nothing and earns this site nothing. A reader who registers and funds an account triggers the payment. The amount differs between operators, and no page here prints a figure for it, because the figure moves and a stale one would mislead.

Two things follow, and both of them matter more than the disclosure itself. The first is that the ranking cannot be read as a judgement. The second is that everything outside the ranking has to be written as though the ranking were not there, or the arithmetic stops being worth printing.

02

The sums are fixed before a single name goes in the block

One piece of arithmetic runs every page here, and it is printed rather than described. Start with the bonus. Multiply it by its wagering multiple, which gives the turnover demanded before money can be taken out. Multiply that turnover by whatever portion of a stake the game holds back. Subtract the second figure from the first. Sixty pence of each pound survives ten times wagering where a game hands back 96 pence of every pound staked, nothing survives twenty-five times, and past twenty-five the answer is below nought. The working is on how we score an offer.

Nothing an operator pays changes any term in that line. A paid slot does not lower a wagering multiple, raise a payback percentage or soften a cap. The arithmetic is the same arithmetic whether a brand bought a place, declined to buy one, or has never heard of this publication.

Facts work the same way. Every claim on every page is traced to a regulator, a statute, an advertising code, a scheme’s own terms or a payment provider’s own published fees. An operator’s marketing material is not a source here and cannot become one by paying.

03

What the block is, described without the sales word

The ranking is a column of advertisements set in a fixed shape so that four of them can be read against each other. It carries what each advertiser publishes: the headline, the money asked for, the wagering multiple and the terms that attach. Where an operator does not publish a term, the ranking says so and the sum beneath it says the cost cannot be worked out in advance.

What the block never carries is a verdict. There is no star, no mark out of ten and no editor’s choice, because a mark awarded inside paid space would be a mark bought with the slot. The order the entries stand in is a matter of commercial agreement, and the date the terms were last read is printed above them.

The names in the block are also not the names in the prose. Operators are written about on this site only through facts that hold for a licensed business in general, or through the published corporate facts of a group. No page says that a particular brand is running a particular offer this week, because an offer moves faster than a page does.

04

Advertising rules reach this site, not only the operators

The non-broadcast CAP Code governs the marketing of gambling to British consumers, and a page carrying a gambling promotion for money sits inside it. Rule 8.17 is the one that bites hardest on a page like this one: a condition counted as significant has to be set out plainly, and set out where it will be seen, in any place where dropping it would mislead. Four groups of condition are significant in the Advertising Standards Authority’s own worked list. Eligibility. The money required. The clock. The odds or bet types allowed.

Two further rules shape the wording throughout this publication. The word free may not be attached to an offer when qualifying for it means putting a reader’s own money at stake. Wording that suggests a reader’s own stake is never in jeopardy is barred unless it is literally true. Both are advertising rules, which is why the phrases they cover appear nowhere on this site and are not a matter of taste.

Prominence is where the Commission adds its own instruction. Significant terms belong beside the headline offer on the landing page and the sign-up page, and an advertisement that pushes them out of sight is treated as misleading. Two more limits apply to any gambling advertisement: children must not be among the people it strongly appeals to, and anybody of or seeming under 25 is barred from being shown gambling in one.

05

The site works with the links left alone

Nothing on these pages is withheld behind a link to an operator. The price line, the tables, the worked sums and the questions are complete on the page they stand on. A reader who wants the arithmetic and none of the advertising can take the figures, close the tab and go direct to an operator’s own site, and this publication earns nothing from that visit. The figures are the same either way.

Checking an operator without using this site is also published practice rather than a courtesy. The Gambling Commission keeps a public register of licensed businesses, personal licences, regulatory actions, public statements and premises, and it can be searched, viewed and downloaded by anyone. The Commission’s own list of what to look at before gambling is short: that the business holds a British licence, that the site displays its licensed status and links to the register, that the details shown match the register, and that the trading names and current status are what the operator claims.

Three limits on the register, because it flatters nobody. A domain marked Active need not be trading. A domain marked Inactive may belong to something that shut years back. And the entry ties a web address to a licence holder while saying nothing whatever about who built the site or who sells it to readers.

06

Telling the publisher a page has drifted

A page that starts to read like a pitch is a fault, and the fastest way to have it corrected is to say which page and which sentence. The address is on write to us, and a message naming a figure that is wrong will be answered faster than one that is not specific. Where a claim cannot be traced back to a primary source, the sentence comes out rather than being softened.

Two neighbouring pages set the rest of the arrangement down. Terms covers what this publication answers for and what it does not. Who prints this covers who writes the pages and on what evidence.