Editorial Policy — How GambleDragon Governs Reviews

This page sets out the rules that govern how GambleDragon produces reviews, makes editorial decisions, and handles corrections, complaints and commercial relationships. It is the document our editorial team operates against. If you want to know how individual ratings are calculated, that lives on the methodology page. If you want to know how we earn money, that lives on the affiliate disclosure page. This document covers the things that sit above both of those.

Independence

GambleDragon is editorially independent. No operator pays for placement, sorting, or removal of disputes. We test brands that pay us nothing and we publish poor ratings for brands that pay us a lot. Several operators have offered boosted commissions in exchange for higher ratings or removed coverage of complaints — we have declined every single time and we will continue to decline.

This is not a marketing slogan. It is operationalised through three rules:

No paid rankings. Ranking position in best-of lists is a function of the 12-point methodology score only. Commission rate per signup is not an input.
No paid removals. Once a review is published with a rating, that rating cannot be lowered or raised in response to a commercial conversation with the operator. It can only be re-tested. If a re-test changes the rating, the previous rating is preserved in the page’s change-log.
No quiet edits. Changes to a published review that affect score, factual claims, or product characteristics are dated and visible. Typo and style fixes are not, but anything that would change a reader’s decision is.

Who can edit a review

Three roles touch reviews on this site:

Reviewer. Runs the methodology. Drafts the review. Cannot publish.
Editor. Verifies the methodology was applied correctly. Publishes. Cannot influence the rating beyond surfacing methodology errors.
Compliance reviewer. Last check before publish. Verifies per-locale compliance (banned phrases, age gating, helpline links, bonus content visibility rules). Cannot influence the rating.

A reviewer cannot be the editor for their own review. The compliance reviewer is independent of both.

For the launch period (2026), one person (Tom Ashby) holds all three roles, with separation enforced by a checklist and a 24-hour cooling-off period between reviewer-draft and editor-publish. As the editorial team grows, the roles will be split across people. Every published review names the reviewer; once the editor and compliance reviewer are different people, those names will appear too.

Coverage decisions

We do not cover every operator that exists. We choose what to cover according to:

Reader demand. Search volume, direct emails, and dispute submissions naming an operator.
Market relevance. Operators that are visible in our target locales (UK, IE, CA, NZ).
Licence visibility. Operators with a publicly verifiable licence are prioritised. Brands operating with no traceable licence will be covered only as cautionary warnings.

We do not filter coverage based on whether an operator has an affiliate programme we can join. We publish coverage-only reviews for brands that have no programme, that have rejected our application, or that we have not yet approached. The full meaning of “coverage” vs “featured partner” is on the methodology page under coverage vs partnership.

Conflict of interest

An author cannot review an operator they have:

a financial interest in (shares, employment, family employment)
an active dispute with as a player (resolve the dispute first, then a different reviewer takes the page)
written for, produced PR for, or consulted for in the previous 24 months

We declare conflicts of interest at the top of any page where one exists. If you suspect a conflict we have not declared, write to [email protected].

Corrections

If a published review contains a factual error, we want to know. Email [email protected] with:

the URL of the review
the specific claim you dispute
(if relevant) the evidence

We respond within 48 hours. If the correction is valid, we publish it with a visible “Updated: [date]” line on the page and a brief change-log entry summarising what changed and why. We do not silently remove inaccurate claims — the change-log is part of the record.

Corrections that affect rating are queued for full re-test rather than spot-fix, since a methodology-grade rating cannot be changed by a single contested datapoint.

Operator response rights

Operators may submit a response to any review on this site. We will:

read the response within 5 business days
correct any factual error it identifies
publish the operator’s response on the review page (where relevant and not defamatory) so readers can weigh both sides
not change the score in response to a request for a higher score that is not supported by methodology evidence

Operators cannot demand removal of a review for any reason other than factual inaccuracy.

Per-locale compliance

GambleDragon publishes for five English-speaking markets (UK, IE, CA, NZ, NL — the last being English-language information only). Each market has its own regulator, banned-phrase list, helpline links, and bonus content visibility rules. The compliance reviewer’s job is to ensure every page complies with the rules for the locale it targets. The rules are:

United Kingdom (UKGC). No “free” applied to bonuses with wagering. No “risk-free” applied to deposits that can be lost. No targeting of under-25s. BeGambleAware + GamCare helpline visible on every commercial page.
Ireland (Revenue Commissioners + voluntary self-regulation). Problem Gambling Ireland helpline visible. No promotion to under-18s.
Canada (provincial regulators, AGCO primary for Ontario). ConnexOntario helpline. Province-specific licence claims must be verifiable.
New Zealand (DIA). Gambling Helpline NZ visible. Offshore-licensed operators must be flagged as such, not portrayed as locally regulated.
Netherlands (KSA). No promotion of operators not on the KSA whitelist to NL audiences. Cruks self-exclusion link visible. Bonus content is hidden by default per KSA rules.

When two locales’ rules conflict on a single page, the stricter rule applies.

Underage protection

We do not target, advertise to, or design content for under-18 readers. Every commercial page carries an “18+” mark and a national helpline link. We use no animated characters, no youth-coded language, no cartoon imagery, and no game-of-skill framing of pure chance products. We do not run free-play demo games on this site.

If you are under 18 and have landed here, please leave the site. Resources for young people who have been affected by a family member’s gambling are at GamFam (UK) and Gam-Anon (international).

Plagiarism and content sources

Every review on this site is original prose written for GambleDragon. We do not republish operator marketing copy as our own assessment, and we do not buy syndicated affiliate content. Where we cite external sources — regulator pages, news outlets, complaint databases, provider RTP sheets — those sources are linked inline and named visibly on the page. AI-generated drafts may be used as a starting point by reviewers, but every fact in a published review must be human-verified against a named source, and every page is run through a methodology checklist before publish.

How to escalate a complaint about us

If your concern is editorial (rating, factual accuracy, conflict of interest, missing dispute), email [email protected]. We respond within 48 hours.

If your concern is commercial (affiliate-tracker behaviour, undisclosed sponsorship, advertising standards), email [email protected] and copy the relevant authority — the Advertising Standards Authority (UK), the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (IE), Ad Standards Canada (CA), or your national regulator. We will cooperate fully with any investigation.

If your concern is regulatory (a specific operator we promote appears to be operating without a valid licence, or in breach of our target locale’s gambling regulations), email [email protected] and please also contact the relevant regulator directly using the contact details on the methodology page.

Updates to this policy

This document is reviewed annually and on any change to:

our commercial model
our editorial team structure
the regulatory landscape in any of our target locales

Every revision is dated. The previous version of this page is preserved in the site’s change-log for one rolling year.

This policy was last reviewed on the date shown above. Comments and queries: [email protected].