Last updated: 14 April 2026
This page lays out the editorial standards that apply to every review, guide and article on Fortunica. The aim is straightforward: give UK players accurate, current and useful information without spinning operators we cover. Below is the actual workflow, not the polished version.
Every claim in a Fortunica article must be either directly tested, sourced from a primary document (regulator register, official T&Cs, provider documentation), or marked as opinion. We don't pass through operator marketing claims unverified. "Industry-leading withdrawals" means nothing until I've timed one. "Generous bonus" means nothing until the wagering maths is on the page.
Opinions are allowed and frequently used. They get marked as opinions: "I'd recommend", "in my experience", "my view is". The first-person voice is deliberate — this site has one named reviewer and the reader should know whose judgement they're reading. Anonymous "we found" claims that hide who actually checked something would let us hide behind a brand voice and we don't want that.
Five stages from idea to publication. Realistic timing in brackets.
Assignment. Imogen flags an operator from her SERP monitoring or our reader request inbox. We review the licence and ownership. About a third of suggestions never make it past this stage because the licence checks fail. (Half a day.)
Research and testing. I run the eight-stage test protocol from the How We Test page. Real money, real account, real timing. Five to ten working days end-to-end depending on KYC and withdrawal speed. Screenshots, deposit records, support transcripts, and bet history exports go into a per-casino folder.
First draft. I write from session notes, not memory. The draft is structured around concrete observations, not template sections (sometimes withdrawals dominate the article, sometimes the bonus terms do. (One to two days.)
Fact-check. Hareem reads the draft against my screenshots and the casino's live pages. Every number gets a source. Every quoted T&C clause gets pulled from the live policy page. Discrepancies between my draft and the source either get corrected or, if the casino has changed something since my test, get noted with a "verified [date]" caveat. (Half a day.)
Publication. The article goes up with byline, publish date, and explicit "verified" date. URL slug uses the casino's exact brand name. Internal links to relevant guides and our methodology pages. Affiliate disclosure block at the foot of every commercial article.
Source ranking matters because not all "data" is equal. The hierarchy we use:
Primary sources. Regulator registers (gamblingcommission.gov.uk, mga.org.mt, curacao-egaming.com), the operator's own T&C page on the date of access, official provider documentation for RTP and game mechanics, and our own test data with timestamps. Anything sourced here can be quoted directly with attribution.
Secondary sources. Industry trade press (CalvinAyre, iGaming Business, EGR), comparison sites with disclosed methodology, complaint mediators (AskGamblers, Casino Guru, CasinoMeister) for player-feedback patterns. We cite these only when no primary source exists, and we note them as secondary in the article.
Not used as fact-check sources. Wikipedia (citation chains break too often), Reddit threads (anonymous, unverifiable), Trustpilot for casino reviews (review manipulation rates are too high to use as evidence), other affiliate sites (circular sourcing problem).
Specific numbers — wagering multipliers, max bet limits, RTP percentages, licence numbers — must trace either to the operator's own published page on the date of fact-check, or to our own test screenshots. We don't pass through numbers we can't currently re-verify.
Affiliate revenue funds Fortunica. The detailed mechanics are on the Affiliate Disclosure page. What that arrangement does not buy: ranking position, score, content, or the right to remove negative findings from a review. Operators don't pre-approve their reviews. Operators don't get advance copies. Operators don't get to negotiate score changes by paying more.
We've delisted operators who paid us well after testing exposed problems. The financial cost of those delistings was real (usually a few hundred pounds of monthly commission, which adds up over a year — and we accept it as the cost of doing the kind of editorial work the site exists to do. If an operator pulls their affiliate programme over a critical review, the review stays up. If a network threatens to drop us over an unfavourable rating, we drop the network.
The structural protection is that we don't take fees for placement, sponsored content, paid reviews, or "expedited" coverage. Our revenue is post-conversion only — a player has to actually click through, register and deposit before any commission accrues. That keeps incentives aligned with reader trust: misleading reviews would lose readers and lose the conversions that fund the site.
We make mistakes. When we do, the procedure is fixed. Reader reports go to [email protected]. Hareem or I read every report within 48 working hours. If the report is correct, we update the article and add a dated correction note at the top: "Corrected [date]: [what changed]". Major errors — wrong wagering figure, inaccurate licence claim, factual error in a recommendation — get a "Corrected" tag visible at the top of the article. Minor edits (typos, formatting, link fixes) we just fix without logging.
We don't silently delete content. If we pull a section, we say what we pulled and why. Articles that stop being relevant — operator closes, brand discontinued, regulatory change makes the content obsolete — get either updated or marked as archive with a top-of-article notice.
All published articles must be signed by a named author with public credentials. Currently that's me. Every author bio must include either a personal page (the author page for me) or another verifiable professional reference. Authors must have personally completed at least one full test cycle on the operator before writing. Authors must disclose any prior commercial relationship with the operator, whether currently active or historical.
Anonymous content doesn't get published. AI-generated drafts without significant human verification, restructuring and personal observation don't get published. Translated reviews from other affiliate sites don't get published. Press-release-driven "news" pieces don't get published.
This section exists because what a publication chooses not to write about is a real editorial decision, not a gap.
Sportsbook-only operators. Different testing methodology, different reader base, not James's expertise. We may add this later under a separate reviewer.
Casinos that we can't legally test from the UK. Some operators block UK IPs entirely or refuse UK passport KYC. We don't VPN around restrictions to write reviews from a player perspective we can't actually have.
Crypto-only experimental platforms. Anything operating without any licence, including "decentralised" gambling protocols and on-chain games. The risk profile is different enough that our methodology doesn't translate.
Operators that target self-excluded players. If an operator's marketing pattern includes emails to dormant accounts of players who self-excluded elsewhere, we don't cover them at all.
Sweepstakes casinos. The legal grey area in the UK is unresolved enough that responsible coverage would require a different framework. We're watching the space but not writing about it yet.
