Opaque bonus terms, slow payouts (over seventy-two hours by card), limited support hours, missing responsible-gaming tools and a reputation for arbitrary account closures all reduce the final score. One serious issue — for example payouts over a week — caps the score at six out of ten regardless of other strengths.
We open an account with a small real-money deposit, claim the welcome offer, play five sessions on the pokies lobby, request a withdrawal and time the full cycle from signup to money in the bank. The sportsbook, app and support channels are reviewed in the same session.
The final score is a weighted average on a zero-to-ten scale. We publish both the number and the written verdict; the verdict always wins if someone has to pick between them in a short description.
We re-score an operator when something material changes — a new app, a licence change, a change in payout timing — and otherwise every six months. The score history is kept on the brand page. The score history for each brand is published on the brand review page, with the date of each change and a one-line reason ("welcome bonus doubled", "new iOS build", "payout timing dropped from forty-eight to twenty-four hours"). Readers can see how a score has moved rather than being told the latest number without context.
Welcome bonus and ongoing promotions weigh twenty-five percent, payouts and payment methods twenty-five percent, pokies and sportsbook lobby twenty percent, mobile experience fifteen percent, support and responsible gaming ten percent, and reputation five percent. The weights can shift by five points per area when a brand's profile demands it — for a bookmaker-only operator the sportsbook area gets more weight than the pokies lobby — but the overall structure stays the same so that readers can compare scores across brands.
Six areas are rated separately: bonuses, payments, lobby, mobile app, support, and reputation. Each is scored on a one-to-ten scale with a short note explaining what we marked up or down.