Editorial Policy and Fact-Checking

This editorial policy sets out how Balkan Gambling researches, writes, checks and corrects its pages. The short version: we use primary sources, a second editor checks every page before it goes live, every operator term and legal statement carries a date, and no operator pays for a place on the site. These rules apply to every page, including our country guides, bookmaker pages and casino guides.

Sources we use

We rank sources in a fixed order and use the highest one available:

1. Law texts and regulators. Gambling acts, ministry and regulator websites, and official registers, for example the Croatian Tax Administration page that names licensed online operators and blocked domains.
2. Licence registers. Each country’s official list of licensed operators, such as the Serbian Games of Chance Administration’s list of approved online operators, matched against the company name and domain in the operator’s footer and terms.
3. Operators’ own pages. General terms, bonus terms, payment pages and responsible gambling pages, with the version date where the operator shows one.
4. Help organisations. Helpline numbers and self-exclusion details come from each organisation’s own website.
5. Reputable trade press. Used for context and news, never as the only source for a legal claim.

We do not use other gambling guides, forums or social media as sources for facts. Each page lists its main sources at the end.

Writing and the second-editor check

Each page has one author with a fixed beat: casino guides and games, betting, law and responsible gambling, or payments. Before a page goes live, a different editor checks it against the sources. Statements about law, tax, licences and help services always go to our fact-checker for law and terms, Maja Horvat. The check covers:

• every number, date, licence number and helpline;
• every payment method, limit and withdrawal rule, against the operator’s terms on the date shown;
• legal wording, so that no page calls an operator licensed when it is not on the regulator’s list, calls unlicensed play legal, or says winnings are untaxed without a law text that says so;
• that the page names its sources and says what we could not verify.

The byline shows both the author and the reviewer. If the two disagree, the claim stays out until a primary source settles it.

Terms, dates and updates

Operators change their terms often. Every payment or withdrawal rule we report carries the date we read it, and terms differ by country, so a detail seen on one date may not match what you see later. We do not quote bonus figures. We re-check pages with operator terms or legal statements at least every three months, and sooner when an operator changes its terms, a regulator acts or a law changes. When a page is updated, its “updated” date changes. We do not change the date without changing the content.

Corrections

Anyone can report an error to [email protected] (see the contact page). We check the report against a primary source. If we got something wrong, we fix the page, update its date and, for a material error such as a wrong licence, limit or legal statement, add a short dated correction note on the page saying what changed. We do not silently delete errors.

Independence: licensed operators only, no paid placement

Balkan Gambling is free to read. We list only operators that hold a licence in the reader’s country, checked on the regulator’s list, and they are listed because they are licensed. We have no commercial relationship with any operator we describe, no operator pays for a place in a list, and no page links to an operator. We give no scores; operators are compared on the five points in our published comparison method.

Sites without a licence in the reader’s country are never listed. We mention them only to explain the risks for players, such as the lack of a local complaint route and of national self-exclusion coverage.

Illustrated guides are not reviewers

Our pages use illustrated characters in tip boxes to make guides easier to scan. They are design elements, not people. They do not test casinos, write reviews or check facts. Only the named author and reviewer on each page do that.

Language versions

English pages sit at the root of the site. Pages in Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian and Bosnian will be written from scratch by native-language editors for each market, not translated from English, and they pass the same fact-check.

Responsible gambling on every page

Every page states that gambling is for adults aged 18 and over (21 in Albania) and links to our responsible gambling page with help services for each country. More about the team is on our about us page, or go back to the home page.

How we checked this page

On 15 October 2026 we confirmed that the two registers named above, the Croatian Tax Administration’s page on online gambling and the Serbian Games of Chance Administration’s list of approved online operators, are publicly available, and that the review workflow described here matches the author and reviewer fields used on the site.

Frequently asked questions

Who checks the facts on Balkan Gambling?

A second editor, different from the author, checks every page against its sources before it goes live. Statements on law, tax, licences and help services always go to our fact-checker for law and terms, Maja Horvat. Both names appear in the byline of each page.

Do operators pay for a place in your lists?

No. Operators are listed because they hold a licence in the reader’s country, checked on the regulator’s list. We have no commercial relationship with any of them, take no payment for placement, give no scores and do not link to operators. An operator that is not on the regulator’s list is not listed at all.

How often are pages updated?

Pages with operator terms or legal statements are re-checked at least every three months, and sooner when an operator changes its terms, a regulator acts or a law changes. The updated date on a page changes only when its content changes, and every payment or withdrawal rule carries the date we read it.

What happens when you get something wrong?

We check the report against a primary source, fix the page and update its date. For a material error, such as a wrong licence, withdrawal limit or legal statement, we add a short dated correction note on the page that says what changed. Errors are not deleted silently.