About the desk

Our purpose, and why we answer to no one

The Non-GamStop Beat exists to bring investigative reporting to a corner of the internet dominated by marketing copy. The site is written from primary documents, filed public records and correspondence with the bodies whose remit covers the topic. It is not an operator directory, not an affiliate site and not a marketing surface.

There are no paid partnerships. There are no bonus tables. There are no ranked lists of anywhere anyone might spend money. What the site provides is reporting on how the offshore gambling landscape actually functions, how the UK Gambling Commission's remit interacts with it, and what a British reader needs to know before making a decision that involves that landscape.

Independence is not a slogan on this site. It is written into the editorial framework. No article on the site accepts sponsorship, advertorial content, or a review commissioned by an operator. Corrections are logged and dated. The names in the by-lines are real people whose professional reputations are on the line for every published claim, and the reviewer's role is not decorative.

If a piece cannot be defended sentence by sentence to a solicitor over the telephone, it is not published on this site, and if a published piece falls out of date, the correction runs within the working week.

How we report and fact-check

Every article goes through a two-person process. The reporter writes from primary documents wherever possible, cites the source of each numerical claim, and drafts the piece with the reader in mind rather than a search engine. The reviewer, Neil Bradbury, spent nineteen years on the Observer's investigations desk with a specialism in gambling and offshore financial flows, and applies a fixed review protocol to every draft.

Every article must cite its primary source. Every number must map to a public document. Every quote must be attributable. Every reference to safer-gambling support must point the reader toward help rather than away from it. Where a draft fails any of those tests, it is sent back for a rewrite.

Fact-checking uses the same techniques any investigative desk would recognise. Gambling Commission enforcement notices are checked against the regulator's own published register. Statutory references are checked against the version of the Act or Regulation currently in force on legislation.gov.uk. GamStop mechanics are checked against the scheme's own FAQ pages.

Numbers relating to the Statutory Levy are checked against the Department of Health and Social Care and Treasury publications that describe them. Where a claim depends on a private source, the source is identified where it is safe to do so, and where it is not, the reasons are made clear on the record.

Our reporting line on operators and bonuses

The site does not name individual operators, does not carry bonus tables and does not carry any form of comparison or ranking. The reasoning is straightforward. Naming an operator, even in criticism, benefits the operator's search visibility. Ranking operators, however carefully caveated, is the marketing architecture that saturates this topic and that this site was set up to be different from.

Bonus tables encourage exactly the impulsive decision-making that safer-gambling bodies work to reduce. None of those artefacts add anything to a reader who is trying to understand how the offshore landscape actually functions, and all of them subtly convert a reporting piece into a marketing surface.

The site reports on the offshore sector in the abstract, on payment corridors, on regulatory reform, on enforcement outcomes and on the shape of the risks a British reader would carry into any decision to engage with it. Where an enforcement action against a licensee is on the public record, it is cited.

Where a Curaçao Gaming Authority filing is publicly available, it is described. Where a corporate structure is visible through public filings, the structure is set out. What is not on this site, and will not be, is anything that operates as a sales channel for the sector it reports on.

Reaching the desk, and putting errors right

Corrections requests are welcomed. If you have spotted an inaccuracy in a piece on the site, please write to [email protected] with a source, and the request will be handled by the editor within the working week. Corrections that are accepted are logged and dated and remain visible in the article footer for the life of the piece.

Corrections that are declined receive a response explaining why, and the reasoning goes into an annual editorial note that summarises the year's correction traffic. Both routes are open equally to readers, to regulators and to the operators and bodies the site writes about.

The editor is also the contact point for public interest tip-offs. If you are close to a story that the site should be looking at, whether that is a payment corridor pattern, a piece of enforcement activity that has not yet been reported, or a change to a scheme's mechanics that has slipped past the trade press, please write to the same address.

Sources are treated with the confidentiality that any competent investigations desk would apply, and no source's identity is disclosed without the source's own consent. If the story warrants it, and if the evidence supports it, the site will publish. If it does not, the site will not, and every reporter's decision on that boundary is defensible on the record.

The site is edited by Eddie Callis, a specialist reporter with fourteen years in regulatory affairs across financial services and gambling, and reviewed by Neil Bradbury, former senior reporter on the Observer's investigations desk with a specialism in gambling and offshore financial flows. Neither the editor nor the reviewer accepts industry hospitality, holds equity in any gambling company, or has a commercial relationship with any operator, licensee, affiliate network or trade body.

Both hold their independence in writing on the record, and both are contactable through the editor's inbox for any concern that touches on the site's editorial framework.