Not without very specific disclosure — and the UK's Advertising Standards Authority has already ruled on exactly this scenario. In September 2017 the ASA censured four major gambling brands — Sky Vegas, Ladbrokes, 888 and Casumo — after an affiliate published near-identical advertorials dressed up as personal-finance news stories, with the fact that the content was an ad buried in small print at the bottom of the page. The ruling remains the clearest word any UK regulator has given on how far a gambling guest post or advertorial can go before it crosses from content into undisclosed advertising.
That precedent matters more now than when it was decided, because guest posting and editorial-style placements are still one of the most common ways agencies build backlinks for gambling brands — and the exact style the ASA punished, an article that reads like independent journalism until a reader notices otherwise, is what publishers often default to unless an agency actively steers them away from it. Here's what the ruling actually found, who it held responsible, and what a UK-compliant gambling guest post needs to look like today.
What did the ASA actually rule against Sky Vegas, Ladbrokes, 888 and Casumo?
On 13 September 2017 the ASA published four rulings covering the same underlying advertorial, placed by a single affiliate marketer across different sites for different operators. The full ruling against Bonne Terre Ltd, trading as Sky Vegas, is still the one most often cited by UK advertising lawyers as the benchmark case for gambling advertorials.
- Sky Vegas: the ad ran on www.uk.24hoursnews.co on 29 April 2017, styled as an editorial news article
- Ladbrokes, 888 and Casumo: near-identical advertorials with the same storyline ran on affiliate-operated "news" domains
- The story centred on a fictional reader, "William," whose gambling wins supposedly cleared tens of thousands of pounds in debt run up by his wife's medical bills
- The disclosure that the page was an ad sat in small print at the foot of the article — after the persuasive story had already done its work
Why does it matter that the content looked like a news article?
Because the CAP Code doesn't just regulate what an ad can claim — it regulates whether a reader can tell they're looking at an ad in the first place. CAP Code Section 2 requires marketing communications to be "obviously identifiable as such," and the ASA's own affiliate marketing guidance spells out that a label buried below a persuasive narrative doesn't satisfy that test — the disclosure has to land before the reader has already been influenced, not after.
That's the specific failure the ASA found here: readers had read a sympathetic, financially-desperate backstory and a gambling win presented as the solution before anything told them it was paid content. The ASA ordered that none of the four ads could run again in that form, and that future affiliate-prepared ads be clearly identifiable as marketing from the outset.
Does this apply to guest posts and niche edits, or only paid display ads?
The CAP Code doesn't carve out an exception by format. A guest post that exists to promote a gambling brand's product is a marketing communication the moment it's published, regardless of what label the publisher puts on it — the same underlying logic this site has covered for how Google treats paid guest posts versus labelled sponsored posts: the arrangement, not the framing, decides the obligation.
Niche edits sit in a somewhat different position, since the host article already existed before a link was inserted into it — there's no fabricated advertorial narrative to disclose. But a purpose-built guest post written specifically to promote an operator carries exactly the risk the ASA punished if it's styled as neutral journalism and the commercial relationship isn't obvious up front.
Is the operator liable even when an affiliate publishes the ad without approval?
Yes, and this is the detail agencies underestimate most. All three sportsbook operators argued the affiliate had breached its contract terms and published the advertorial without submitting it for approval first. The ASA upheld the complaints anyway, holding that each operator was responsible for the ad as the beneficiary of the marketing — a defence of "we didn't see it" does not move the liability off the brand being promoted.
Terminating the affiliate relationship after the ruling, which all three operators did, doesn't retroactively fix the compliance problem — it only stops the next one. The only real protection is vetting a publisher's output before a campaign goes live, the same diligence vetting a gambling link building vendor requires for any placement, not just the ones built for the UK market.
How does the UK's disclosure rule interact with Google's own guest-post rules?
They're separate obligations that both apply at once. Google's spam policies list large-scale guest posting and advertorials built around optimised anchor text among its link-scheme examples, and require any link exchanged for payment to carry a rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" attribute — a rule this site has detailed for nofollow links generally. That's a link-level, machine-readable disclosure aimed at search engines. The CAP Code's requirement is a content-level, human-readable disclosure aimed at readers.
A UK gambling guest post needs both. Tagging the link correctly satisfies Google; it does nothing for a reader who still can't tell the surrounding article is an ad. Agencies running UK campaigns have to check both boxes on every placement, not treat either as a substitute for the other.
What does a compliant UK gambling guest post actually look like?
A workable compliance checklist for any UK-facing gambling guest post or advertorial:
- Label the commercial intent before the headline is read — "Ad," "Promotion," or "In partnership with [Brand]" — never only in small print at the foot of the page
- Never fabricate a personal story or frame paid promotional copy as independent news reporting, the specific failure the ASA cited in 2017
- Require every affiliate or guest-post publisher to submit final copy for sign-off before it goes live, rather than relying on a contract clause after the fact
- Tag the link itself per Google's rules — rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" — as a separate step from the CAP Code's content-level disclosure
- Keep a dated record of what copy was actually approved, so a rogue affiliate placement can't become the operator's liability by default
The bottom line on gambling advertorials and the ASA
The ASA's ruling against Sky Vegas, Ladbrokes, 888 and Casumo didn't ban gambling brands from using guest posts or affiliate content — it drew a clear line around disclosure that still governs every UK placement built since. A guest post can read well and still promote a brand; it just can't let a reader finish the persuasive part of the story before learning it was an ad. That's exactly the distinction a vetted UK casino backlink program should already be building into every placement, rather than something an agency discovers after a regulator does.
Sources
- ASA Ruling — Bonne Terre Ltd (Sky Vegas), A17-386853
- ASA — Affiliate Marketing Guidance
- ASA/CAP Code — Section 2: Recognition of Marketing Communications
- CMS Law — ASA Rules Against Four Gambling Operators for Affiliate Marketing Breaches
- Osborne Clarke — ASA Clamps Down on Gambling Affiliate Advertising
- Google Search Central — Spam Policies for Google Web Search
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Open the inventory →The iGaming Links Editorial Team
iGaming link building & gambling SEO
Written and fact-checked by the iGaming Links team — the people who source, vet and place gambling backlinks across a network of 60,000+ casino and mainstream domains every week. Our guidance comes from running real guest-post, niche-edit and PBN campaigns for SEO agencies, iGaming operators and affiliates, not from theory.