Referral codes, invite offers and the limits of promotional claims

What the desk reads in a referral offer

The desk reads the same three lines in a referral offer as in a welcome offer: the rollover, the expiry and the game weighting. A clean referral offer publishes all three in plain language, allows a withdrawal after the rollover is complete, and does not tie the withdrawal to a minimum playtime that is not published. The desk publishes the load-bearing reading in the platform review.

What the desk does not do: the desk does not accept a referral code from any platform, does not promote any one platform's referral code, and does not sell access to a "best referral code" list. The desk is editorial; the reading is a reading resource; the verdict is the desk's honest reading.

How referral tracking works

Referral tracking is the system a platform uses to attribute a new player to the referrer. The system typically works on a one-time code: the new player enters the code on sign-up, the platform attributes the new player to the referrer, and both receive a small credit. The credit is typically tied to a rollover, an expiry and a game weighting; the small print on all three is what separates a clean offer from a misleading one.

What the desk recommends: read the small print before entering a referral code. The credit is small, often a fraction of the deposit, and the rollover is the load-bearing number. A referral offer with a 5x rollover is rare; a referral offer with a 20x rollover is more common; a referral offer with a 50x rollover is a red flag. The desk publishes the platform-specific rollover in the platform review.

What the desk treats as a red flag

The desk treats three patterns as red flags in any referral offer. The first is a rollover above 20x; the second is an expiry below 7 days; the third is a game weighting that excludes the rummy formats. Any of the three is a red flag; two of the three is a strong red flag; all three is a stop. The desk publishes a list of platforms that have triggered any of the three red flags in the platform review.

What the desk will not move on: the line on responsible play does not move, regardless of how good the referral offer looks. The line is the same for every reader: set a deposit cap, refresh the cap on a fixed schedule, and stop when the cap is reached without negotiation. The line does not move because the line is the line.