Summary in one paragraph
PokieLadder earns a referral commission when a reader registers and plays at some of the casinos we review — exactly like the vast majority of AU-facing casino review sites. A person connected to this site also holds a silent (non-operational) shareholder interest in a group of six casinos that appear in our review set. That interest is disclosed on every review page for those casinos, and our scoring methodology is applied identically to every casino we cover. We do not inflate scores for casinos we are paid to promote or have a stake in.
1. Why This Page Exists
Australian consumer law (ACCC / ACL) and international best practice (US FTC 16 CFR Part 255, UK ASA CAP Code) require review publications to disclose material commercial relationships clearly and prominently — not buried at the bottom of a terms page. This page exists to make those disclosures easy to find, read and verify.
2. How We're Paid
PokieLadder is supported by two kinds of commercial relationship with the casinos we review:
- Affiliate referral commission. If you click a link on our Site that takes you to a casino, and you subsequently register and play at that casino, the casino pays us a small percentage of its revenue or net loss from your activity over a defined period. The commission is paid by the casino, not by you — your deposits, bonuses and withdrawals are not affected by whether you arrived through our Site.
- Shareholder interest (specific to some casinos — see §4 below). A person connected to PokieLadder holds a sleeping (passive, non-operational) equity interest in a group of six AU-facing casinos. This is a potentially more significant commercial relationship than routine affiliate commission, which is why we disclose it separately.
3. What Commission Does Not Do
Commission or shareholder interest does not:
- Affect our scoring rubric — the same eight weighted dimensions are applied to every casino we review.
- Guarantee a casino a higher ranking — reviewers have refused to include operators that fail our criteria even when a commercial relationship was available.
- Allow the casino to edit or veto our review — no operator sees a review before publication.
- Buy premium placement. Home page ordering is driven by score and category fit, not by commission rate.
- Cost you anything. Your bonus terms, deposit options and withdrawals are whatever the operator publishes, independent of our link.
4. Shareholder Interest Disclosure (Important)
A specific disclosure for six casinos in our review set:
A person connected to PokieLadder is a sleeping partner (passive shareholder) in the parent company that operates the following six casinos:
- Fortune88
- B4Bet
- AUSSIE2WIN
- THE STAR (online)
- RIPPERBET
- LE88WIN
"Sleeping partner" means the individual holds a financial stake but has no role in the day-to-day operation, management, pricing, promotion, support, payment or player-facing conduct of those casinos. However, the individual does benefit financially if those casinos succeed — which is a material commercial relationship we believe readers are entitled to know.
Because this is a stronger relationship than a standard affiliate one, we apply three additional safeguards to reviews of these six casinos:
- Review pages for the six casinos carry a prominent per-page disclosure at the top of the page, in addition to this site-wide disclosure.
- Where data is available, we publish real withdrawal times and bonus outcomes rather than operator-claimed figures.
- We deliberately include competitor casinos in our review set — so readers have a visible like-for-like comparison alongside any casino in which a shareholder interest exists.
You remain the final judge of whether to act on our reviews. If you would prefer a zero-relationship source, we recommend cross-checking against the Australian Gambling Research Centre, Gambling Help Online forums, or a non-affiliate review publication — and we are happy to point you to one via [email protected].
5. Which Casinos Currently Pay Us Commission
PokieLadder receives affiliate commission from all casinos in our current review set. A specific per-casino disclosure is published on each review page with the indicative commission basis (e.g. "revenue share" vs "net loss share" vs "CPA"). We update per-casino disclosure when commercial terms change.
6. Non-Paying Casinos and Competitors in Scope
We include reviews of casinos with whom we have no commercial relationship when they are a relevant comparison point for AU players. These "reference" reviews are clearly marked and are scored against the same methodology as paying casinos. No score adjustment is applied on commercial grounds.
7. Advertising vs Review Content
PokieLadder does not accept sponsored posts, paid reviews, or operator-authored guest content. Every page on the Site is written or commissioned by our editorial team. If we ever publish a piece of content that is paid for in whole or part by a sponsor, it will be clearly and unambiguously labelled as "Sponsored" at the top of the page — including in the URL slug where feasible. As of the date of this page, no such content exists on the Site.
8. Changes to Commercial Relationships
Commercial arrangements with casinos change from time to time. When they do, we update this page's "Last updated" date and the per-casino disclosure on the affected review pages within 30 days. Material new relationships (e.g. a new operator group being added to the review set with the same shareholder posture described in §4) will be flagged on the home page for at least 14 days.
9. Reader Choice and Alternatives
If you would prefer not to support our Site via affiliate commission, you have several options:
- Navigate to any casino we review directly by typing its URL into your browser — we have no way to track a visit that does not originate from one of our links;
- Use a non-affiliate review publication for cross-checking;
- Visit the operator's own about or licensing page for primary-source information.
The Site remains freely accessible whether or not you click an affiliate link.
10. Contact
Questions about any disclosure on this page — or about a specific casino's commercial relationship with us — can be raised with the editorial team at [email protected]. We treat disclosure enquiries as a priority.
This page is written in plain English and is intentionally specific. If anything on this page is unclear, we consider that a bug and would like the opportunity to clarify it.