How we grade the award bodies
A grading of award bodies is worth nothing unless the rubric is published first, so here is ours, with the reasoning behind each of the six tests.
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A rubric has to be printed before it is used
Grading the people who hand out the prizes is a presumptuous exercise, and the only honest way to run it is to set the rule down before applying it to anybody, so that a reader who disagrees argues with the rule instead of the verdict. That is the order we have followed.
The objection arrives before the method, because every reader reaches it unaided: a stranger cannot grade a jury whose deliberations are private, and a row of ticked boxes says nothing about whether the best entrant won. The objection holds.
What an outsider can read is never the deliberation but the paperwork around it (the rules page, the list of judges, the archive of past years), and paperwork is either published or it is not. That makes it the one part of an award body a reader can settle from outside.
Our six tests are therefore all of one kind, each a yes or a no that anybody can settle in an afternoon from the body's own pages: a named third party auditing the vote, "entry terms" in writing (what a company must do, and pay, to be considered), the "shortlist" (every name the body printed in that category, and not the winner alone) published rather than withheld, judges named with a rule about conflicts, a scoring method set down, and an archive that stays where it was put.
The six, one at a time
A named third party who audits the vote
Two bodies of the eleven we read name one, and in both cases the name belongs to an accountancy firm: Deloitte adjudicates the EGR Operator Awards (that series only) and KPMG in the Crown Dependencies adjudicates the Global Gaming Awards.
An "adjudicator" (the trade's word for a firm that checks the count and not the choice) settles arithmetic rather than merit, a narrower service than the title suggests; what it buys is a firm with a licence of its own at risk, standing between the ballots and the companies that gain from them. The other nine name no such firm, so "independent" stays a word on a page rather than a check a reader can repeat.
Entry terms, in writing
The American Gambling Awards declare that entering is free, and they are the only body on our list to put the absence of a charge in writing. Casinomeister goes wider still and declares that a casino cannot pay to be listed or handled differently, which is the nearest thing to an answer on "pay to enter" that we found: a promise about a whole portal (reviews, the "accredited" roll, the complaints service) and not one evening.
AskGamblers publish that voting costs nothing (their voters are registered players) and leave any charge to the operator undeclared; Casino Guru publish that a company may enter a category once, and say nothing about money either way. The remaining seven are silent, and "not declared" is printed on these pages as a finding about the body rather than a hole in our reading.
The field printed, and not the winner alone
Nine of the eleven publish their finalists (we counted them on the bodies' own pages), and the two that do not are the International Gaming Awards and the Gaming Intelligence Awards, whose pages name a winner without ever showing who else stood in the category. The size of that field counts as much as its publication.
The Global Gaming Awards put ten names in every category and SiGMA puts five. So a "finalist" (one name of ten, or one of five) is two different distinctions wearing a single word. It is also the point where a "win" and a "nomination" change places on an operator's own page: a brand that was "shortlisted" stood among ten, which is worth saying but not as a victory.
Judges named, with a rule about conflicts
The American Gambling Awards print twenty judges with the role and the organisation of each, make abstention compulsory where a judge's own company has entered (their term is a "conflict of interest", printed beside the names), keep the organiser's staff off the panel, and refuse affiliate entries altogether.
The SBC Awards list their judges by name and publish no rule about conflicts; the Global Gaming Awards do the reverse, publishing the rule (one voter for each company, and no vote in a category where your own employer stands) without the names. Half of this test, by itself, leaves you very little.
A scoring method a reader could follow
One body sets down how marks become a winner, and it is the American Gambling Awards again: each judge ranks the entries in a category first or second, the entry with the most firsts takes it, and seconds break a tie. SiGMA publishes a weighting instead, seventy per cent to its "jury" and thirty to a "public vote", without saying how either half is counted; a weight is not a method, though it is more than most of this field discloses.
The SBC Awards state plainly that their scoring is not published, and the Gaming Intelligence Awards offer a single phrase, "without favor or bias" (their words, and all of them), in place of a "process". A method is also a promise about next year, and we weigh it above any one result.
An archive that stays where it was put
Casinomeister keeps twenty-five "editions" (one year of a series, in the trade's word) at twenty-five fixed addresses, 2001 to 2025, and AskGamblers keep every one since 2017 on a single page carrying the first, second and third place in each category. A "winners page" that stays at one address is the whole of this test, and six others pass it: EGR keeps one for each year and each series, the American Gambling Awards one for each year since 2022, SiGMA one for each summit, Casino Guru a single page covering 2023 to 2026, the Global Gaming Awards one for each series and each year (Americas back to 2014, EMEA to 2018), and the Premios Jdigital one covering 2022 to 2025.
Against that, the Global Gaming Awards keep nothing on their own site (their past editions survive on Gambling Insider), the International Gaming Awards keep one page of "outstanding contributions" and no winners at all (the twentieth edition falls in 2027), the Gaming Intelligence Awards keep one page for 2024, and we could not verify the Jdigital archive in either direction. A clerical habit decides whether a badge from four years ago can be read at all!
The tally, test by test
A named auditor of the vote: two bodies of eleven. Entry terms in writing: one, with one portal-wide promise beside it. The field of finalists printed: nine. Judges named with a conflict rule: one. A published scoring method: one. An archive that stays put: eight, with two partial and one that is a single page for a single year.
- the trade press
EGR Awards
Run by EGR Global. Winners chosen by a jury of industry professionals. Third-party adjudicator: Deloitte, for the Operator Awards only.
Read the profile → - the trade press
Global Gaming Awards
Run by Gambling Insider and Gaming America. Winners chosen by entry by the company, then a vote of a panel of executives, with ten shortlisted in each category, no company placing more than one member on the panel, and a member obliged to abstain where their own company is shortlisted. Third-party adjudicator: KPMG in the Crown Dependencies.
Read the profile → - the trade press
SBC Awards
Run by SBC Events. Winners chosen by a jury, with the judges listed by name. Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile → - the trade press
International Gaming Awards
Run by Clever Duck Media Ltd. Winners chosen by declared judges from declared entries, by a process that is not published. Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile → - the trade press
SiGMA Awards
Run by SiGMA Group. Winners chosen by a seventy-thirty split of jury and public vote, from a shortlist of five, where anybody working in the industry may enter, including their own company. Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile → - the trade press
Gaming Intelligence Awards
Run by Gaming Intelligence Services Ltd. Winners chosen by a process that is not published: the page says only that judging is "without favor or bias". Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile → - a review portal
AskGamblers Awards
Run by AskGamblers, part of Gentoo Media. Winners chosen by two stages: registered players nominate, then players and experts vote and ten finalists are chosen in each category. Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile → - a review portal
Casinomeister Awards
Run by Casinomeister. Winners chosen by a shortlist the moderators draw from the forum in each category and then put to the members. Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile → - a review portal
Casino Guru Awards
Run by Casino Guru. Winners chosen by a panel of internal and external experts, with interviews of the shortlisted entrants; two categories go to a public vote. Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile → - a review portal
American Gambling Awards
Run by Gambling.com Group. Winners chosen by twenty judges named with their role and organisation; each ranks the entries first or second, the most firsts wins and seconds break a tie; abstention is compulsory on a conflict, Gambling.com staff are barred from the panel and affiliates may not enter. Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile → - a national award
Premios Jdigital
Run by the Asociacion Espanola de Juego Digital. Winners chosen by a vote of the member companies and of users, with a professional jury taking the final decision. Third-party adjudicator: none named.
Read the profile →
Where the six leave the eleven
Added up, the body that passes most of the tests is also the one with the narrowest remit: the American Gambling Awards clear five of the six, miss only the auditor, and cover one regulated market while barring affiliate entries (it is run by Gambling.com Group, an affiliate business itself). Six tests, and the best score belongs to a ceremony run by an affiliate company!
A high score is no promise that the deserving entrant won, and a low one is not an accusation. It reports how much of a result can be rebuilt from outside the room, and that is why we publish a rubric and not a ranking.
The cheapest of the six to repeat is the last, so take it for a drive: find a badge on any casino page you like, open the site of the body named on it, and look for the year before last. If that page opens, every grade we have given here can be checked against the body by anybody in an afternoon.
If it does not open, the badge describes a party nobody can attend now, and the adjective "award-winning" is all that survives.
Questions
Why six tests and not a score out of ten?
Because each test is a yes or a no that a reader can check in a minute, and a composite number would hide which of them failed. A body that publishes everything except its archive is a different problem from one that publishes nothing.
Does a low grade mean the award is worthless?
No. It means the result cannot be audited from outside, which is a limit on what a reader should conclude rather than an accusation. Several results from unaudited bodies are perfectly real.