How this site earns its keep

What we are paid, and by whom

Reel Shortlist is an independent comparison website funded by affiliate commissions. Some links on this site — the "Visit" buttons on operator cards — carry tracking parameters. If you follow one and then register with the operator, that operator may pay us a commission, calculated per click, per registration or as a share of its marketing spend, depending on the agreement.

Three things follow from that, and each deserves its own sentence. The money comes from the operator's marketing budget, so using our links costs you nothing extra and earns you nothing extra. The operator never pays you anything through this site — winnings, bonuses and every other transaction happen entirely between you and the operator, under its licence. And Reel Shortlist is not a party to any gambling transaction: we cannot see, touch or influence your account, your stakes or your balance.

What commercial ties can and cannot change

Honesty requires the uncomfortable half of the disclosure too: commercial relationships can influence which operators appear on this site. We shortlist brands we can review properly and, where possible, work with — that is normal affiliate practice and we won't pretend otherwise.

What money cannot change is what we say once a brand is listed. Verdicts, category picks, criticism in reviews and every factual claim are produced by the editorial process described in our editorial policy, with no operator sign-off. A brand that dislikes its one-word verdict has exactly one way to improve it: improve the product.

How to recognise a paid link here

• Every operator CTA is marked with an "Ad · 18+ · T&Cs apply" note on its card.
• All outbound operator links carry rel="sponsored" in the page code — the standard machine-readable label for commercial links.
• Editorial links — to the UKGC register, to safety services, between our own pages — carry no tracking and earn nothing.

Questions this page doesn't answer? Write to the desk.