Gambling is one of the worst-sourced subjects in circulation. Figures travel without origins, a trade-press estimate becomes a statistic in a week, and the number nobody can trace is usually the one everybody quotes.
We revise a page when the statute, filing or report behind it changes: if the source is not in front of us, the figure does not go up.
What is on this page
This page sets out the rules this desk works under, so a reader can check whether a page follows them.
The source rule
A figure, a date, a licence number, a legal citation or a quotation appears on this site only when a source stands behind it, and the source is named in the sentence or linked from it.
Primary documents outrank summaries. Where a statute, an administrative code, a court opinion, a regulator's filing, a licence register or a test-lab standard exists, that document is the source. A news story about the statute is not the source; it is a route to the source.
Where only a secondary summary exists, the page says so in the sentence — "according to a secondary summary" — rather than borrowing the authority of a document nobody has read.
Where a claim cannot be sourced at all, it does not get written. The sentence recording that the material could not be found stays in the piece, because the absence is often the finding: a rule everyone cites and nobody can locate is a story about the rule.
What that rule costs, visibly
Pages here carry fewer round numbers than most gambling coverage, and they sometimes end without a conclusion. A comparison of five jurisdictions that could only be sourced in two is published as a comparison of two, or not at all. That is the trade: fewer assertions, each of them checkable.
Dates
Every page carries a review date. It is the date the page was last read against its sources, not the date it first appeared, and not a figure moved by a script to look fresh. When a correction is made, the date moves. When nothing has changed, the date stays where it is.
Facts stated as of a date keep that date. Where a law, a fee or a tax rate is given for a particular year, the year is the year in the source, and it is not quietly advanced because time has passed.
No bylines
Material here is unsigned. A byline is a promise that a named person with a checkable record stands behind the piece; a byline on a site like this one would name somebody you could not check, which is worse than no name at all. So the pages carry the publication's name, a review date and the sources, and nothing else. The desk answers for everything on one address.
For the same reason there are no author biographies, no claims of years of experience, and no description of a testing process on a site that tests nothing.
Photographs
Every photograph is published under a licence named in the caption beside it, with the photographer's credit as the licence requires. The images are documentary — a betting counter, a slot floor, a bingo hall — chosen because they show the subject, not because they look like stock. No portrait of a private individual is published here. If a credit or a licence is wrong, write and it is fixed or the image comes down the same day.
Commercial links
Some pages carry commercial links, and the footer discloses it on every page of the site. What that disclosure means in practice:
- A commercial relationship buys a link. It does not buy coverage, a ranking, a rating or the removal of a critical line.
- The source rule applies to every page the desk writes, commercial or not.
- Where a page was published as a commercial placement, its text and its links stand as they were agreed, and this publication does not retrofit its own conclusions into them.
Material we did not write
Material submitted for publication is published in the open Market Watch desk. It goes up as it was filed, with the sender's own wording and the sender's own links, and it says so under its own headline: the desk does not write it, does not check the figures inside it and does not stand behind them. The source rule above is a rule about the pages the desk writes; a submitted page carries no such promise, which is exactly why it is labelled rather than mixed into the rest.
The labelling is the whole of the arrangement. A submitted page buys the page it is on and nothing beyond it — no mention in a desk piece, no place in a comparison, no line removed from one. It can be corrected or taken down on request to the address below, the same as anything else here.
Corrections
Corrections are made in place, and the review date moves. A correction that names the page, the sentence and the document is actioned within a day. Where a figure turns out to have no source, it is removed rather than hedged.
Write to [email protected].
What this site is not
Not a court, not a regulator, not a law firm, not a treatment provider, not a helpline, and not affiliated with any of them. Nothing here is legal or clinical advice. The domain's former occupant and this publication are unconnected, which is set out in full at about this domain.
If gambling is causing harm to you or to someone close to you, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is open at all hours on 1-800-GAMBLER, run by the National Council on Problem Gambling.
Questions we are asked
Why does a page about a court case carry no author name?
Because the work is institutional and the claim is checkable without a name attached to it. A docket number, a statute citation and a report page let a reader verify a sentence themselves; a byline only invites them to trust someone they cannot verify. Where a page needs a person — a quote, an opinion, a judgement call — it names the person who actually said it, in the document where they said it.
Some of the older pages here read like marketing. Why are they still up?
They were sold as placements by whoever held this domain before the publication did, and people still arrive on them from links elsewhere. Taking them down would break those links and hide what the domain used to be; rewriting them would be putting our words in someone else's filing. They stay as they were found, in the publication's frame, and the commercial links inside them are labelled as paid.
How do you decide what gets a number and what does not?
A figure is printed only when a document fixes it, and the document is named in the same breath. If the only source for a number is another site that also does not name a source, the number does not go up at all — the field stays empty and the page says so. That is why some tables here have gaps where a competitor would have a figure.
Do you take money from operators?
No listing, ranking or mention in a page the desk writes is for sale, and nothing the desk writes is written to an operator's brief. Two things here are paid, and both are labelled where a reader meets them: the commercial links inherited with the domain, which are kept as they were found, and material submitted for publication in the open Market Watch desk, which goes up as it was filed. The publication runs no affiliate links of its own, and no payment moves a line in a page the desk wrote.
How often is a page revised?
When the thing behind it changes — a ruling, a licence condition, a statute coming into force, a regulator's report. Not on a schedule, and not to make a date look newer: a page that nothing has happened to keeps the review date it earned.