Affiliate Disclosure

Updated

Regulon earns money from some of the casinos it writes about. This page explains exactly how, what it changes and what it does not, because a disclosure that nobody can follow is not really a disclosure.

The short version

If you click a link from this site to a casino and open an account, that casino may pay us a commission.

It costs you nothing. You get the same offer, the same terms and the same treatment as a player who found the site by typing its name into a browser. There is no price difference, no worse bonus and no reduced account.

We take commission from some listed operators and not from others, and both appear on this site on the same basis.

How it works

Affiliate marketing is how almost every comparison site in this industry is funded, whether it says so or not.

When you follow one of our links, a tracking parameter records that you arrived from Regulon. If you then register and meet whatever conditions the operator sets, usually a first deposit, the operator pays us. Payment is typically either a one off amount for the referral or a share of the operator’s revenue from that account over time.

We never see your identity, your deposits, your play or your balance. What reaches us is aggregated attribution data, which tells us that a certain number of referrals converted, not who they were. Our privacy policy explains the data side in more detail.

What commission does not buy

This is the part that matters, so it is specific rather than reassuring.

It does not buy a listing. Every casino on this site has been through the checks in our methodology, starting with confirmation that the operating company named in its terms appears on the regulator’s own published register. An operator that fails that check is not listed, at any price.

It does not buy a position. Our comparisons are ordered on licence, accountability and tested payment behaviour. A casino with a Malta licence and a clean withdrawal record will rank above one on a lighter regime regardless of which pays more.

It does not buy a rating. Ratings come from the testing process and are set by the editorial desks, which do not negotiate commercial terms and are not told what a given operator pays.

It does not buy silence. If a casino we have a relationship with delays withdrawals, rewrites terms retrospectively, or misdescribes its own licence, we publish that and remove the listing where our criteria require it. This has cost us revenue and will again.

It does not buy a licence. A casino cannot pay its way onto a regime it does not hold, and the licence is what this site compares.

Links to casinos in our guides are usually affiliate links. These are the buttons in the casino grids of our guides, which leave this site through a regulon.co.uk/go/ address. The Visit site links in the homepage list of Gambling Commission licensees are plain links to the casinos’ own websites and pay us nothing.

Links to regulators, legislation, support organisations and news sources are never affiliate links. We earn nothing from GamCare, GamStop, the NHS or any gambling authority, and we would not take money from them if it were offered.

We also label affiliate links where you meet them, not only on this page. Every casino grid that contains affiliate links carries an advertising disclosure line directly above it.

Where we have no relationship

Some operators discussed on this site pay us nothing, because we have no arrangement with them, because they declined one, or because we did not seek one.

They are covered on exactly the same terms. The sections on Costa Rica are the clearest illustration. We say that Costa Rica issues no gambling licence and that operators claiming one hold ordinary company registration, and that position has not changed for any commercial reason and will not.

Why we do it this way

The alternative models are worse. A paywall would put licensing information behind a payment, which is the opposite of the point. Display advertising pays badly and tends to fill a page with the loudest offers rather than the best ones.

Affiliate commission funds the part of this site that actually costs money, which is the testing. Opening accounts with our own funds, depositing, verifying, playing and withdrawing is slow and it is not free, and it is the only way to know how a casino behaves rather than how it advertises.

The arrangement only works if readers can trust the output. A comparison site that sells its rankings is worth nothing to anybody within a year, including to the operators paying for position, so our interest in keeping the editorial side clean is practical as much as principled.

Advertising standards

We aim to comply with UK advertising rules on clearly identifying commercial content, with the Gambling Commission’s requirements on how gambling is promoted, and with the industry standards on not targeting under eighteens or vulnerable people.

We do not use language suggesting that gambling is a solution to financial difficulty, a way to make money, or a path to social or sexual success, and we do not place content where it is likely to reach children.

Questions

If something about our commercial arrangements is unclear, or you think a page is not disclosed properly, write to complaints@regulon.co.uk and we will answer directly. Commercial enquiries go to partnerships@regulon.co.uk, which is a separate desk from the one that writes the reviews, and that separation is the whole basis of this page.