What we will publish, and what we will not

Sources, in order of precedence

1. The Gambling Commission's register of gambling businesses. The only source we treat as authoritative for licensee names, account numbers, licence numbers, licensed activities, activity start dates and declared domains.
2. The operator's own published pages. Used for what an operator says about itself: terms, promotion conditions, safer gambling pages and what a visitor can see in the lobby without an account.
3. Direct observation of the public site. Used for structure and visibility — how far a reader has to travel to find limits, terms or the licensee's name.

Where these disagree, the register wins. Where a fact appears nowhere in them, it does not appear here.

The four pillars, and their weights

Each pillar is marked out of ten, weighted, and combined to one figure shown to a single decimal place. A score is an editorial opinion held by this publication. It is not a rating issued by any regulator, it is not a safety certificate, and it carries no implication about your chances of winning.

Claims we do not make

• Bonus figures, deposit minimums and withdrawal times. They change without notice; a stale figure misleads more than a missing one. We describe how promotion terms work instead, in our promotion terms guide.
• Reader review counts and star averages. Easy to display, impossible for a reader to audit. We publish our own reasoning rather than an unverifiable crowd.
• Payout percentages we have not been able to source. Where an operator publishes audited figures we may cite them; we do not estimate them.
• Awards, accreditations or endorsements. We hold none and claim none. We are not connected to the Gambling Commission, GAMSTOP, GamCare or GambleAware.
• Anything implying gambling is a route to income. It is not, and presenting it that way would breach both the advertising codes and our own view of what this site is for.

Separating commerce from editorial

Reel Outlook earns commission from some operators it links to, as set out in our affiliate disclosure. Three rules keep that away from the writing: placement is never sold, scores are never negotiated, and criticism is never withdrawn at an operator's request. Commercial correspondence about a brand is handled at the same address as everything else and has no bearing on the assessment.

Fairness to operators

We aim to describe an operator in terms it would recognise, even where the conclusion is unflattering. Judgements are separated from facts by wording — a licence number is stated, a verdict is attributed to us. If an operator believes we have described it inaccurately, the correction route is the same as for readers, and evidence from the register or the operator's own published pages will settle it quickly.

Keeping the site current

Licences lapse, brands are sold, domains change and sites are redesigned. We re-check register data for every brand we list when we revise a page, and we record the date of that check on the page itself so you can see how fresh it is. We do not claim a fixed review cycle we cannot guarantee; we do commit to correcting anything shown to be wrong, and to saying so when we do. The mechanism is described on our corrections page.

Who writes this

Reel Outlook is written and edited in-house by the small editorial team that publishes reeloutlookuk.com. We do not attribute articles to invented authors or to experts who do not exist. Questions about any judgement on the site can be put to editor@reeloutlookuk.com and will be answered by the people who made it.