Gamblers Connect has launched News by Region, five pages that sort the newsroom’s coverage by the market it is about. Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa each have a page of their own, and every story is filed under where the news happens, not where the company behind it keeps its head office.
The news desk has always been organised by what kind of story it is: B2B deals, regulation, appointments, finance, events. That answers one of the two questions a reader brings to it. It does not answer the other, which is where. A compliance lead at an operator entering Brazil has no use for a Danish spending report, and a supplier preparing an Ontario application wants Alberta and Ontario in one place rather than spread across thirteen categories. From today, both can follow one market without the rest.
Why we built it
Between 14 September and 14 October the newsroom published 286 stories. By our own count, made by reviewing the title and tags of each one, 193 concerned a specific market and 93 had no single market at all. Two in every three stories had a geography, and until now there was no page that collected them. The only way to follow one market was the search box.
News by Region changes that. Each of the five pages carries its own latest stories and archive, updates as the newsroom publishes, and sits in the main navigation under News by Region.
The five markets
Europe covers the UK, Malta, Gibraltar, the Nordics, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland and the Balkans.
North America covers the United States and Canada: the state and provincial regulators, Ontario and Alberta iGaming, and the sportsbooks, casino groups and suppliers that serve them.
Latin America covers Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, from Brazil’s regulated betting market to Colombia and the Argentine provinces.
Asia Pacific covers Asia, Australia and New Zealand: the Philippines, Macau, India, Japan and the Australian federal and state regulators.
Middle East and Africa covers South Africa’s provincial boards, Nigeria, Kenya and the growing betting markets across the continent, plus the UAE and the wider Gulf.
Those descriptions say what each region usually holds rather than limit it. A story from Portugal is Europe and a story from Peru is Latin America. The markets named on each page are the ones that produce most of the news, so a reader knows what to expect before opening it.
One rule for where a story belongs
A story belongs to a region when the news happens there or the rule applies there. The company’s head office does not come into it. A Maltese supplier going live in Brazil is Latin America. A London studio certified for Pennsylvania is North America.
A story can carry two regions when it concerns two markets, and it then appears on both pages. A Philippine operator’s statement on its Brazil exposure is Asia Pacific and Latin America. Two is the limit. A story that touches more markets than that is global.
Global stays in Latest News. A worldwide product launch, an appointment at a supplier with clients everywhere, or a cyber security story with no single jurisdiction stays in Latest News and its category and does not appear on a region page. The region pages are deliberately narrower than the news desk, which is the point of them.
What does not change
A region page is a different way of reading the same newsroom output. Every story on it carries the same byline, the same Sources panel and the same fact check it had on Latest News, and the editorial policies apply unchanged. Region assignment is an editorial decision made by the newsroom and is covered by the Independence policy like any other: it cannot be bought and it is not sent to anyone for approval.
Gamblers Connect is iGaming B2B media. We do not provide traffic, do not operate as an affiliate, and do not refer players. The region pages exist so that operators, suppliers, affiliates, payment providers and regulators can follow the markets they work in. They are not a guide to where anyone should play.
Luka Dimitrijevic, Partnerships and Operations Lead at Gamblers Connect, on the launch:
Quite excited for this one. Our readers don’t work in categories, they work in markets. If you run compliance for Brazil, you want every Brazil story on one page, the court ruling, the supplier deal, the appointment, not spread across half the site. So we kept it simple: a story goes where the news happens, not where the company sits. Nothing about how we write or check a story changes.
What comes next
The five pages update every day the newsroom publishes. The monthly GC Briefing covers the same five markets in one email. Corrections and right of reply on any story on a region page go through the Complaints Procedure in the policy library, exactly as they do for Latest News.
News by Region is live now at gamblersconnect.com/news/region/.
