Casino affiliate programmes: how they work and what to check
This page is for the webmasters and publishers who send readers to online casinos and are paid for it, as we have been since 2002. An "affiliate programme" is the contract under which an operator pays a commission for the players your site brings, and the five programmes below are those we work with; the text around them explains how such a contract works, which clauses matter and why the reader's country matters most.
What an affiliate programme is
The mechanism is older than the web (department stores paid "finders" a share of a customer's first purchase), and online it rests on a tracking link. A reader clicks on a link carrying the affiliate's identifier, a cookie or a server record attributes the registration to that affiliate, and that player's deposits are credited to the affiliate for as long as the terms say. The programme supplies the links, the banners and a monthly statement, and the affiliate supplies the readers.
The reader pays nothing extra, since the commission comes out of the operator's margin, which is also why it can be high: a casino keeps, on average, the "house edge" of its games and shares a part of it with whoever brought the player. This is the arrangement that our disclosure sentence describes on every page, and the reason why an affiliate's review is read best with its method in view (ours is on the About page).
Revenue share, CPA and the hybrid
A "revenue share" pays a percentage of the net revenue the player leaves, after the deductions defined by the agreement (bonuses, payment fees, gaming taxes, sometimes an "administration fee"), and the tiers the programmes below publish reach forty-five per cent. A player who deposits five hundred and loses two hundred in a month, with a share of thirty per cent and deductions of forty, produces forty-eight for the affiliate (thirty per cent of one hundred and sixty), and a winning month produces a negative figure!
A "CPA" (cost per acquisition) pays a fixed sum for each player who registers and deposits a minimum, and the "hybrid" combines a smaller CPA with a smaller share. The choice depends on the traffic: readers depositing once and leaving are worth more under a CPA, readers staying are worth more under the share, and a programme pushing one model hard knows which one its players fit.
What to check in an agreement
The first clause is the "negative carryover": where a player wins in a month, the affiliate's balance for that brand goes below zero, and a programme without carryover resets it on the first of the next month, while one with carryover deducts it from future earnings. The second is "bundling", that is whether the losses on one brand of the group are set against the earnings on another, which turns ten brands into one account.
Then come the payment threshold and the schedule (monthly or twice a month, by wire, e-wallet or crypto), the "minimum activity" clause that cuts the share of an affiliate sending no new player for some months, and the clause allowing the terms to change with a notice on the programme's site. The "lifetime" revenue lasts exactly as long as the agreement does, and a programme that writes these clauses in plain words is already telling you something.
The markets problem
An affiliate inherits the operators' markets problem, and inherits it twice. The operators on this site address the international market and do not hold a licence in every country from which readers arrive, so a programme pays nothing for players from the countries it excludes (the "restricted territories" of its terms) and can close an account that keeps sending them.
The regulated markets add their own rules: in Great Britain the Gambling Commission holds the operator responsible for what its affiliates publish, in Ontario a promotion may not be advertised outside the operator's own site, and Italy has banned gambling advertising (the "Dignity Decree" of 2018, in force since 2019). Some markets go further and license the affiliate itself (Romania, New Jersey), so the question of a licence depends first on the country of your readers.
Two letters show what this means in practice. The Michigan Gaming Control Board sent cease-and-desist letters to Miami Club (14 August 2025) and to Ripper (7 April 2026), two Deckmedia brands, for accepting players from a state in which they hold no licence, and the pages built for that state lost their value overnight. A publisher who reads the regulator's register before the programme's brochure, as our guide to legitimate casinos suggests for players, is spared that morning.
The programmes on this page
The five programmes below are those we work with, each presented with its brands as they appear on these pages and with what it publishes about itself; the figures are the programmes' own, they can change, and the agreement on the programme's site prevails. None of them has paid for its place here, the order is not a ranking, and the casinos they run are reviewed by us with the same frame.
Ad disclosure: some casino links are affiliate links; we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never affects our ratings. 18+.
888 Affiliates
888 Affiliates is the programme of the 888 brands (888casino, 888poker, 888sport), run by a group listed in London since 2005 and renamed Evoke in 2024, and it was known as "Uffiliates" in the early years of this site. The casino holds licences from the UK Gambling Commission, Gibraltar and the Malta Gaming Authority, the strongest frame on this page, and the commission model (revenue share, CPA or hybrid) is agreed with the affiliate manager under the terms published on the programme's site.
Visit 888 AffiliatesRewards Affiliates
Rewards Affiliates is the programme of the Casino Rewards group, whose brands on this site are Casino Classic, Casino Kingdom, Captain Cooks, Golden Tiger, Grand Hotel, Grand Mondial, Luxury Casino, Quatro, Villento, Yukon Gold and Zodiac, licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and sharing one loyalty programme. The group publishes monthly eCOGRA payout reports, and Casino Classic is one of the two casinos on this site tested with real play, by our collaborators from two Canadian markets before 2025.
Visit Rewards AffiliatesBuffalo Partners
Buffalo Partners is the programme of the group behind Spin Casino, Ruby Fortune, Jackpot City and Gaming Club, houses of the first generation that run on Games Global (formerly Microgaming) software and hold licences from the Malta Gaming Authority and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. Jackpot City is the second casino on this site tested with real play, by our collaborators from two Canadian markets before 2025, and the brands available to each market and the commission tiers are set out on the programme's site.
Visit Buffalo PartnersBonaFides Affiliates
BonaFides Affiliates is the programme of Fairspin and Weiss, two casinos built on the Trueplay platform and licensed in Curaçao, which this site presents as offshore operators with the conservative rating that frame requires. Its particular feature, according to the programme's own page, is that the attribution of players to affiliates and the bets they place are recorded on a blockchain the affiliate can inspect, and that payments are issued twice a month in crypto or by bank transfer; the terms on that page prevail.
Visit BonafidesDeckMedia
DeckMedia is the programme of the Deckmedia group, licensed in Curaçao and addressed above all to players from the United States and Australia: SlotoCash, Miami Club, Uptown Aces, Uptown Pokies, Fair Go, Ozwin, Red Stag, Ripper and Decode, joined in 2026 by Sun Palace, Slots Plus, Las Vegas USA and Vegas Casino Online. The programme advertises a revenue share of up to 45 per cent without negative carryover and monthly payments by bank wire, Skrill or Bitcoin, and the markets problem described above applies to it in full, as the Michigan letters to Miami Club and Ripper show.
Visit DeckMediaFrequently asked questions
A contract under which an operator pays a site for the players it brings, tracked through a link carrying the site's identifier: the commission is a share of what those players lose ("revenue share"), a fixed sum per depositing player ("CPA") or a mix of the two. It comes out of the operator's margin, so the player pays nothing extra.
Neither is better in itself: the share pays for years if the players stay and nothing (or less than nothing, with a negative carryover) in the months they win or leave, while the CPA pays once and at once. A site with loyal readers usually does better with the share, a site with passing traffic with the CPA, and the hybrid exists for the sites in between.
In most countries no, although the operator answers for the affiliate's marketing (in Great Britain under the Gambling Commission's conditions), some markets license or register the affiliate itself (Romania, New Jersey) and others forbid gambling advertising altogether, as Italy has since 2019. The answer depends on the country of the readers rather than on that of the publisher, and the "restricted territories" of each programme say which.
Every page with affiliate links carries the disclosure sentence and the 18+ reminder, the ratings are set by the licence and the terms before any commission is counted, and an operator whose terms turn against the players leaves the site whatever it pays; the method is on our About page and the rest in the FAQ.
By the Online-Casinos.ws editorial team · Online since 2002 · Last updated: 9 October 2026