How UMG Gaming works
This page is the canonical description of how the directory is built: how sites get listed, how scores are calculated, and the rules every review follows. None of it is secret, and all of it can be checked against our open data.
How sites get listed
Our team lists US-facing iGaming sites across five categories: sweepstakes casinos, social casinos, sportsbooks, prediction markets and casino apps. Listing is free and editorial. Operators cannot pay to be added, removed, ranked higher, or rated better, and they are not asked to. Site details such as the operating company, launch year and state restrictions come from our research of public sources.
When a site shuts down we do not delete it. It moves to the inactive archive, because a record of sites that disappeared is part of an honest directory.
How the star ratings are calculated
A site's score is the weighted average of its published player reviews, each rated 1 to 5 stars. Reviews from verified players count five times; every other review counts once. That is the entire formula. There is no decay, no editorial adjustment, and no minimum review count that unlocks a different number.
A review becomes verified when its author proves a real customer relationship with the operator: they forward an email the operator sent them to verify@umggaming.com with a code we issue, and our team checks it by hand. Verified reviews carry a badge. The stars a reviewer gave are never changed; weighting affects only the site's aggregate score, and the review count we display is always the plain number of reviews.
Sites with no published player reviews are unrated. They show grey stars and a dash, and they never match a rating filter. We never invent or seed a score.
The colors across the directory follow the score:
The rating filter and the "Highest rated" sort use this same weighted average, so what you filter by is exactly what you see on the cards.
How the ordering works
The default "Recommended" order shows transparency-verified operators first, then our editorial ordering, then the player-review average. Every other sort is purely mechanical: "Highest rated" by the review average, "Newest" by listing date, and "Name" alphabetically.
The transparency-verified seal marks operators that display our live rating widget on their own website, so players see the independent, player-driven rating on the operator's own pages, whatever that rating is. It cannot be bought — the only way to earn it is to show players the real score, and an operator that removes or hides the widget loses the seal and its placement. The seal never affects a site's score, only its position in the Recommended order.
The rules every review follows
- Every review comes from a registered account with a public reviewer profile.
- One review per player per site, editable and deletable by its author at any time.
- Reviews must describe the reviewer's own genuine experience, in their own words, without payment or incentive from anyone.
- Reviews publish immediately and unedited. We never touch review content beyond removal.
- Operators cannot pay to add, edit, bury or delete a review, and neither can anyone else.
We remove reviews that are:
- fabricated, or not based on the reviewer's own experience;
- paid for, incentivized, or part of a coordinated campaign;
- spam, advertising, or off-topic content;
- unlawful, defamatory, or containing personal data of others.
Removal is the only moderation action we take on content. We do not edit reviews, and removals for the reasons above are counted in the published review totals only while the review is live.
Corrections
If a site detail is wrong, a listed offer is outdated, or you believe a review breaks the rules above, email alex@umggaming.com. We review every report.
Check it yourself
Because the database is open data under CC BY-SA 4.0, anyone can download every rating and review and recompute the scores. If our math ever disagrees with the data, the data wins and we fix the math.