The ABG Trust Index™ Methodology
Every operator on this site carries one number, the Trust Index. It is an explicit editorial assessment, not a measurement: our analysts score each operator from 0 to 10 against six written tests, the weights below are fixed, and the published score is the weighted mean of those six scores. Nothing on the site prints a score that was typed in by hand.
The six criteria and what each one is worth
Not every criterion matters equally. In the African markets we cover, whether an operator is genuinely licensed where it is selling, and whether the money moves on the rails people actually use, decide more than anything else. The weights sum to 1.0 and are the same for every operator, in every market, with no partner variant and no country variant. This table is generated from the live model each time the page is served, so it cannot fall out of step with the scores it explains.
| Criterion | Weight | What we test |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing and regulatory standing | 30% | Can we find the operator on the licensing authority's own published register for the market in question, with a current licence term and a product category that covers what it is selling? An operator we can confirm on a national register scores highest; one we can only confirm from its own terms scores in the middle; one we cannot confirm at all scores low. Offshore registrations do not substitute for a local licence. |
| Local deposit and withdrawal coverage | 20% | How many of the payment channels people actually use in the market are supported, named correctly, and documented in the operator's own help pages — including current brand names rather than retired ones. |
| Product breadth for the market | 15% | Sports and market coverage, and whether casino, crash and virtual products are genuinely available in that country, confirmed on the operator's own country site rather than assumed from another market. |
| Bonus and withdrawal terms clarity | 15% | Are the wagering base, the qualifying-bet rules, the time limit and the maximum bonus stated plainly in terms the reader can find before depositing, and do the headline figures match the small print? |
| Support and complaints handling | 10% | Are there contactable support channels in the market's time zone, a named complaints route, and a documented escalation path to the regulator? |
| Responsible gambling and account controls | 10% | Deposit limits, self-exclusion, time-outs and reality checks present and reachable from the account area, plus age verification applied before withdrawal. |
Licensing and regulatory standing
The heaviest criterion, and the one that can remove an operator from a country page entirely. We look for the operator on the licensing authority's own published register for the market in question, with a current licence term and a product category that covers what it is actually selling. An operator we can confirm on a national register scores highest; one we can only confirm from its own terms and conditions scores in the middle; one we cannot confirm at all scores low. An offshore registration does not substitute for a local licence.
Local deposit and withdrawal coverage
A sportsbook that cannot pay a Ghanaian punter to MTN MoMo, or a Kenyan punter to M-Pesa, is not usable however good the odds are. We check how many of the payment channels people actually use in that market are supported, whether they are named correctly in the operator's own help pages — current brand names, not retired ones — and whether deposits and withdrawals are documented rather than left to support to explain.
Product breadth for the market
Sports and market coverage, and whether casino, crash and virtual products are genuinely available in that country. We confirm this on the operator's own country site rather than assuming it from another market — a product that exists on a brand's European site regularly does not exist on its Ghanaian or Ugandan one, and a table that copies the feature list across borders is quietly wrong.
Bonus and withdrawal terms clarity
A "300% bonus" is worth nothing if the wagering requirement makes it unwinnable, and worth less than nothing if the headline and the small print disagree. We check whether the wagering base, the qualifying-bet rules, the time limit and the maximum bonus are stated plainly somewhere the reader can find them before depositing, and whether the headline figures match the terms page.
Support and complaints handling
What happens when something goes wrong decides whether a dispute is recoverable. We check for contactable support channels in the market's own time zone, a named complaints route rather than a generic inbox, and a documented escalation path to the regulator — the last of which is the one most operators omit.
Responsible gambling and account controls
Deposit limits, self-exclusion, time-outs and reality checks have to be present and reachable from the account area, not buried in a policy page with no control attached to it. We also check that age verification is applied before withdrawal rather than only at signup. See our responsible gambling and self-exclusion guides for what these tools should look like in practice.
How the six become one number
The Trust Index is the weighted mean of the six criterion scores, rounded half-up to one decimal place. Because it is computed rather than stored, a criterion score can never disagree with the published total, and a change to one criterion moves the number everywhere it appears — the review, the country page, the comparison table and any article that cites it — in the same update. Model version 2026.09.
Worked example, generated live from the model — BetBooker: (9.0 × 0.30) + (9.0 × 0.20) + (7.5 × 0.15) + (8.0 × 0.15) + (8.0 × 0.10) + (7.5 × 0.10) = 8.375, which rounds to 8.4. You can check that against the criterion table on the BetBooker review, which is produced by the same function.
Category pages do not reuse this total. Each of them ranks on the single criterion the category is actually about — mobile apps, Aviator sites, instant withdrawals and free bets each lead with their own criterion and carry the overall Trust Index only as a secondary column.
Zero Tolerance Policy (The Blacklist)
Some failures are not a low score on a criterion, they are a reason not to list an operator at all. If an operator fails any of the following, it is removed from the directory and any affiliate relationship with it is terminated.
What this model is not
It is an editorial judgement, applied consistently, and it is worth being clear about the limits of that. The criterion scores are assessments made by named analysts against the written tests above, not readings taken off an instrument. They are reviewed when a licence, a payment rail, a bonus term or a regulator's rules change, and we publish a dated correction when a score moves for a reason a reader would want to know about. Where a criterion turns on a checkable fact — a licence category, a named payment rail — the fact is recorded and the review page cites it.
We earn affiliate commission from some of the operators listed here. That relationship is disclosed on every page it applies to, and it is not one of the six criteria: there is no field in the model an operator could pay to change. The BetBooker spotlight works through what that means in the one case where we do hold a commercial partnership, including the two non-partner operators that out-score the partner on its own country page. Our editorial guidelines set out how reviews are produced and corrected.