Press & media

Press inquiries

For interviews, data requests, methodology questions, or fact-checks, email noah.rafkin@bonusbandit.win. We can speak to sweepstakes-casino payout reliability, KYC and terms practices, state legality, and how individual operators score. We respond to legitimate press on a same-week basis.

Quick facts

• 232 operators on our public leaderboard
• 143 operators tested first-hand
• 42 operators that have paid us
• 148 redemption requests logged
• 112 confirmed delivered payouts

Quick-fact figures read Sep 2, 2026, from the site-wide metrics registry. Every page that publishes one of these figures registers it against that same registry, and a build where two registered pages disagree fails instead of shipping. They move as we test more operators, so cite them as current as of your publication date. Full context on site by the numbers. Happy to confirm any of them before you run it.

What it is

An independent trust-score site for sweepstakes casinos.

How operators are scored

A published seven-factor methodology: redemption reliability, KYC fairness, terms honesty, playthrough, track record, reviews, and support.

First-hand testing

Operators are tested with real accounts and real money; documented cash-outs feed the score directly.

Player reports

Players submit first-hand experiences (payouts, KYC, account closures) through a public report page; every report is reviewed by a person before anything is published, and reports never change a score.

Independence

No operator can pay to change a score or a ranking. Affiliate links are disclosed and never affect scoring.

Founder

Noah Rafkin.

More on how it all works: the methodology · editorial standards · about the founder · site by the numbers · the complaint index.

How to cite us

Please attribute scores and figures to Bonus Bandit and link to the specific page you're drawing from (an operator's Trust Score page, the methodology, or a state legality page) so readers can check the source. Two citable datasets rebuild from our database on every deploy: the payout study (first-hand cashout testing) and the complaint index (review sentiment across the full operator catalog), both CC BY 4.0 with attribution. For a dated snapshot that won't shift under a story, the quarterly industry report freezes each quarter's legal actions, market exits, and score movement. For company-level reporting, the A1 / UTech network profile ties the Funrize family of brands to registry records, federal dockets, and state attorney general actions, each with its source and retrieval date. Live scores are recomputed over time, so cite those figures as current "as of" your publication date. We're glad to confirm any number before you run it.

Data for journalists

If you cover gambling, consumer protection, or state regulation, our database is available to you without asking. Start here:

• Start at the catalog. The dataset catalog lists everything we publish as data with what one row is, which operators it covers, every field and its unit, what a null means, the limits, and a copy-ready citation. Read it before you open a file.
• Downloadable datasets. Dated CSV snapshots of the complaint index and the payout study, CC BY 4.0, on GitHub and Kaggle.
• Live JSON API. Current trust scores and the full complaint index, no key needed, rebuilt on every deploy: see embeds & API. The same page has embeddable, always-current badges and a stat card for your CMS.
• Release manifest. The current build publishes a machine-readable manifest of itself at /api/release-manifest.json. If you are quoting a live figure and want your story to record which deploy it came from, pull the manifest at the same time you pull the number.
• Custom cuts. Need one state's operators, one operator's complaint history, or a figure sliced a way we don't publish? Email us what you need; if our data supports it we'll pull it, and if it doesn't we'll say so plainly.
• Fast comment on breaking enforcement. When a state bans, an attorney general acts, or an operator collapses, we can usually provide same-day data context and an on-record quote. Say "deadline" in the subject line and we treat it that way.
• First-hand sources. Players who report an experience to us can opt in to being connected with a journalist. If a story needs a real player, ask; we only make introductions the player has agreed to twice, once at submission and once for your specific story.

Method notes for anything above: methodology · complaint index · payout study · state legality tracker.

Media kit

Charts, as PNGs you can drop straight into a story. Each one is an export of a figure this site renders from its own database. The exports are made by hand rather than on every deploy, so treat a PNG as a snapshot: open the linked page next to it and check any number you plan to print against the live figure. If you need a chart at a different size, a different cut, or with the underlying rows attached, email noah.rafkin@bonusbandit.win and we will render it. Please credit Bonus Bandit and link the page the chart comes from.

• tier-distribution.png How our published trust scores spread across the scoring tiers. Live figure: trust-score distribution
• delivered-by-operator.png The operators that delivered the most confirmed payouts to our accounts. A ranked top slice, not every operator that has paid us. Live figure: payout study
• payout-speed.png Median time from redemption request to money arriving, by operator. Live figure: payout study
• redemption-duration.png The spread of measured redemption times across every cash-out we have timed. Live figure: redemption times
• min-redemption-buckets.png Minimum redemption thresholds, bucketed, across the operators that disclose one. Delisted operators are out of scope. Live figure: minimum redemptions
• kyc-turnaround.png How long identity verification took at each operator we ran KYC with. Live figure: how long KYC takes
• q2-legal-events.png Concrete state legal actions during Q2 2026, plotted by event date. Commentary and introduced-but-unpassed bills are excluded. Live figure: Q2 2026 industry report
• q2-revisions-by-factor.png Which scoring factors moved during Q2 2026, and how often. Live figure: Q2 2026 industry report

Logos and wordmark: logo.png · logo-wordmark.svg · logo-wordmark.png. Founder headshot: noah-rafkin.jpg.

Coverage

• RTFM 271: Noah Rafkin introduces Bonus Bandit – pushing for sweeps transparency The Gambling Files podcast · August 6, 2026

For operators

If you run an operator we score and believe something is wrong or out of date, we want to know. Send corrections or a right-of-reply to noah.rafkin@bonusbandit.win. We review every substantiated correction, publish operator responses where warranted, and record any score change with its reason in the public changelog. What we won't do is alter a score in exchange for anything. See the affiliate disclosure for how we make money.