Launch tracker and terms analyst · Kingston, Ontario · 34
I started tracking casino launches because I kept noticing that the offer I had written down was not the offer on the page a month later. Not dramatically -- a multiple that went from thirty-five to forty, a maximum bet that dropped from eight dollars to five, a game quietly moved onto the excluded list. Individually trivial, and collectively the difference between a bonus you can clear and one you cannot.
So that is what I record now. For each site on this page I have the terms as published at launch and the terms as published today, and where those differ the direction of the change tells you more about how an operator intends to treat you than anything in its marketing. One site here has not moved a single figure since it opened, and it is ranked second largely for that reason.
Star ratings are not published here and neither are launch dates to the day. Operators rarely disclose a real launch date and the soft launch and public launch are usually months apart, so a precise figure would be invented. Where something is genuinely checkable -- which regulator, whether a licence number resolves, whether the weekly ceiling was published before registration, whether Interac was live -- it is in the review.
I also say when an offer should be declined, including at sites that pay a commission when somebody signs up through this page. The biggest number here is one I would advise almost everybody against taking, and the review shows the arithmetic rather than just flagging it.
Every site here opened to Canadian players inside roughly the last twelve months, and each was assessed on where it sits along the launch curve rather than as a snapshot. That means three things were recorded per site and one was deliberately not.
Recorded first: the offer as published at launch against the offer as published now. Where a site has been live long enough for that to differ, the direction and size of the change is the single most useful signal on this page -- an operator that quietly doubled a wagering multiple eight weeks in has told you something about how it intends to treat the next cohort. Recorded second: which terms were readable before registration at each point -- wagering multiple, maximum bet while bonused, game weighting, and the weekly withdrawal ceiling. Several sites published three of those four at launch and the fourth only later. Recorded third: which payment rails were actually live, checked at the cashier rather than taken from a logo strip on the homepage, because a logo on a marketing page is not a working integration.
Not recorded: a launch date to the day. Operators rarely publish one, the soft launch and the public launch are frequently months apart, and a precise date invented for the look of it would be a small lie in service of appearing authoritative. Where this page says a site opened recently, that is what is actually known.
Each account was registered, verified, funded on a Canadian rail where one existed, played unbonused and withdrawn from. No star ratings are published -- a single number attached to a business in its first year is false precision. The ranking weights offer stability first, terms transparency second, licence and operator history third, and the headline size of the welcome offer last.