Very few online casinos sign direct deals with every game studio they carry. Instead, they connect to an aggregator, a single integration that pulls in slots, table games and live dealer tables from dozens of studios at once. Many iGaming Platform Providers run their own aggregation layer, while others partner with an outside company and pass the content through. Adding a new studio this way can take days rather than months. Each game still needs approval in every state or country where it goes live, though, so a catalog of 5,000 titles on paper might look a lot smaller to a player in Michigan.

A review site that earns a cut from every sign-up has an obvious reason to go easy on the programs it covers. Affiliate Gambling Programs avoids that conflict by using no referral links at all, and it says so in capital letters at the top of the page. An affiliate who joins a program after reading a review there isn't generating commission for the reviewer, which makes a harsh verdict much easier to believe.

Plenty of vendor rankings in the gambling industry are paid placements with a review attached. At iGaming Platform Provider, the rule is that providers cannot pay for a higher rank, and the site says so right on the main page. It also publishes an editorial policy and a separate page on how it makes money, so readers can see where the revenue comes from and decide for themselves how much weight to give the scores. Pages carry update dates as well, which matters in a market where licenses and product lines change often.