Conflicts of Interest in Casino Reviews

Almost all casino review sites are commercially funded, most commonly through affiliate commission. The problem is not the funding model but the absence of disclosure and method.

Reasonable practice looks like this: state that links are affiliate links and how the site is paid, publish the criteria and weights behind any score, separate paid placement from editorial ranking and label it, and keep the ability to publish a negative assessment of a commercial partner.

Unreasonable practice: ordering by commission rate while presenting it as merit, scoring every partner between 4.5 and 5, removing criticism at a partner's request, and burying disclosure in a footer link.

A useful reader test is whether the site has ever published something unfavourable about a brand it links to. If not, the ranking is a rate card.