Operator fees explained

Top Casino Reports costs nothing to read. Running it does cost money: test accounts, the deposits we make to try each cashier, and the hours spent writing and correcting reports. Those costs are covered by fees that a number of the operators covered in our reports pay to Lorikane Content N.V., the site’s publisher. This page sets out how those fees work.

The arrangement in four lines

Spotting a commercial link

Links whose address begins with /go/ on our own domain are commercial. They pass through a short redirect that records the visit, saves the visit cookies described in the cookie section of our privacy policy, then sends you to the operator with a tracking reference attached. Buttons such as “Visit” and “Claim” in our tables use these addresses. Links to regulators, charities and support services are never commercial.

What a fee does not buy

• A higher score. Scores come from the test and are written before anyone looks at what an operator pays.
• A better position in a table. Order follows the scores, not the size of a deal.
• Silence. Slow withdrawals, unfair bonus clauses and poor complaint handling are reported whether or not a deal exists.
• A place on the site for an operator without a Gambling Commission licence. No such operator is listed, whatever it offers.

What commercial ties can still affect

We would rather be candid here than look flawless. Agreements can influence which operators we find time to test first, and whether a report carries a working sign-up button. An operator without a deal may still get a report, but its link will be a plain one and will earn us nothing.

Revenue share is a conflict of interest

Under a revenue-share agreement our income from an operator grows as the readers we refer lose more money with it. We name that conflict openly rather than hope nobody notices. It is one reason every page carries the helpline number and deposit-limit advice, and why we never describe a bonus, a game or a system as a way to earn money.

Keeping testing and deals apart

Reports are written from the notes taken during a test and from the operator’s published terms. Commercial terms are negotiated separately by the company, and the checklist used in a test is identical for every operator, with or without an agreement. When a deal begins or ends, that alone is not a reason to rewrite a report; a report changes when the operator changes something we test, or when we find that we got something wrong.

When an operator loses its licence

If an operator disappears from the Gambling Commission register, or its licence is suspended, we take its commercial links down and either mark the report as out of date or remove it. An agreement with us does not change that, and neither does any fee already earned through earlier sign-ups.

Why we publish this

You are entitled to weigh our opinion knowing who pays for it. A review site that hides its income asks for a trust it has not earned, and readers aware of the deal can decide for themselves how much weight a verdict deserves. That is the whole purpose of this page: not to reassure, but to give you the facts you need to judge us.

Marketing rules we write to

Affiliate content about gambling counts as marketing under the UK advertising codes, and we write it on that basis: nothing aimed at under-18s, no suggestion that a bet can solve a money problem, and no pressure to sign up before an offer “runs out”. Spot a page that misses this standard? Please let us know about it.

Questions about our income

Questions on any of this: [email protected], or by post to Lorikane Content N.V., Penstraat 35, Willemstad, Curaçao. The limits of what our reports can promise are covered separately in our disclaimer.