Better World Casinos is shaking up the iGaming affiliate space by promoting transparency and ethical decision-making.
Led by CEO Floris Assies, the company aims to empower consumers to make socially responsible decisions about where to play.
By evaluating and endorsing gambling brands based on their Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESCG) standards, Better World Casinos celebrates those operators who excel in Sustainable Governance, while highlighting those needing a little more public encouragement to improve.
Join us in this important conversation, as our Head of Content, Curtis Roach, and Floris (pictured below) explore promoting and evaluating sustainability in the iGaming industry – and the future of Ethical Gambling and Affiliate marketing.
Why did you decide to report on Online Casino sustainability? How is this directly related to the future success of the iGaming Affiliate market?
“I’ve been interested in philosophy, ethics, and sustainability all my adult life.
“Since late 2016, I have worked in the casino affiliate business, and I guess it was inevitable that my brain would cross-pollinate the two.
“When I started thinking about creating my affiliate site, as a content marketeer specialist, I was looking for a niche that I am passionate about. Hence, I started evaluating gambling companies’ corporate social responsibility, ethics, and sustainability.
“No one else was doing it. I believe it’s important information for the consumer.
“If the player can have the same user experience and value for money while playing at different casinos, but one casino takes better care of their players, employees, and the environment than another, can we make players choose the first over the latter?
“I don’t know if that directly relates to the overall future success of the iGaming affiliate market. However, I am convinced that all businesses and industries need to become more sustainable and ethical to survive and thrive as a species.”
What are the criteria for judging the Sustainability of an operator? What do your findings tell you about the future direction of the iGaming industry? And how can we improve industry standards?
“Judging the sustainability of operators is a complex and lengthy process. We are still a long way from achieving what we envision. Eventually, we will rate companies using more than 100 metrics and compare them to create a ranking.
“These metrics are divided over three topics: Environmental (e.g. energy use, emissions, waste management), Social (Responsible Gambling, Diversity, Equality, Inclusivity, Belonging (DEIB) and Charity/Philanthropy); not forgetting Governmental (profit sharing, paying taxes, compliance, data security, et cetera).
“Visitors to our site can then determine how they want to rank casinos and sportsbooks based on what they find most important and what aligns with their values.
“So far our findings tell us that the big publicly traded companies are doing many things. But in our opinion, they still have a long way to go to become what we would consider truly sustainable and ethical companies.
“We hope to improve the industry by increasing transparency and holding companies accountable. By making this information public and pushing the conversation, we want to inspire companies to do better and, as a result, improve the standard of ethical and sustainable business.”
Your report has reinforced the idea that transparency is not just a virtue but a necessity. What role do you think new technology such as AI, automation and open banking, amongst others, will play in the road to industry Sustainability?
“A huge role!
“To give some examples: There is a lot of data to crunch. We use large language models (LLM), like ChatGPT, to filter the data we extract from annual and sustainability reports.
“These documents are sometimes over 100-pages long. Reading them completely would take a lot of time. With the speed at which AI (Machine Learning and LLMs) is developing, I think we can fully automate this process in the not-too-distant future.
“It’s interesting that you mention open banking.
“Before this summer, I wasn’t familiar with it, but then I spoke with a company that uses open banking data to build responsible gambling tools. This sparked a whole new train of thought about the potential for uses for this information.
“Eventually it comes down to the idea that more data is more information, and information interpreted becomes knowledge.
“AI will help with this. Previously companies have been able to behave unethically and get away with it because no one knows what they are doing.
“I think those days will soon be over – thanks to the digital tools and increased data in the public sphere.”
You’ve placed Kindred, Entain and Rank Group at the top of the Sustainability leaderboard for 2023. Do you expect this to change going forward? Are there other operators making positive changes?
“I tried to explain in our report that we are cautious with making premature statements on which companies are the most sustainable because we still have a long way to go to understand all the data.
“Integrity is our number one company value and our highest concern.
“We want to respect the people working at those companies and the hard work they do with their best intentions.
“Our current rankings rely heavily on the data from CSRHub. In the near future, we want to rely more on our own data. That said, yes. I expect to see many changes in the rankings.
“Developments such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Malta Gaming Authority ESG code of conduct will give us access to more data and more companies to review.
“Accordingly, these companies will start to realise how vital ESG is and become more experienced in reporting and implementing this new knowledge in their business plans and development.
“As to which companies will lead and score highest, we will have to see.
“I think the publicly-owned companies will improve first, under shareholder pressure. And then I hope the private ones will follow under the pressure of public opinion.”
Editor’s Note:
Under Floris’ pioneering direction, Better World Casinos is driving the iGaming industry towards a new era of Transparency and Sustainability.
For operators committed to ESCG, this new ranking and affiliate seal of approval offers a valuable opportunity to highlight their efforts to the ever-growing number of ethically conscious consumers in the market.
Although not yet fully developed, Better World Casinos will eventually allow consumers to compare casinos based on over 100 data points and the metrics that matter most to them – such as energy use and emissions, inclusion and diversity, or philanthropic contributions. And make it easy for them to decide where to spend their money.
For operators who perform less well on ethical metrics, Floris hopes this advancement in affiliate rankings will push the conversation forward and inspire them to do better.