Editorial policy

Gallop Post publishes two kinds of thing: reporting about the real virtual racing industry, and a simulated circuit of its own. The first has to be sourced like any trade reporting. The second has to be reconstructable, which is a harder test than sourcing and the reason this paper prints seeds. The rules below cover both. They are enforced on the desk, not aspirational, and the date this page was last read through is 18 October 2026.

• This paper is not owned by, funded by, or commercially connected to a bookmaker, a wagering operator, a virtual racing supplier or a game studio.
• It takes no bets, holds no accounts and holds no reader funds. There is nothing to deposit and nothing to withdraw.
• There are no affiliate links anywhere on the site, and no promo codes, sign-up offers or bonus content in any form.
• No editorial placement is sold. A story cannot be bought, and a product cannot buy its way into a column by supplying access, credits or review copies.
• No operator is named as a recommendation. Suppliers, studios and operators are named when they are the subject of the reporting, which is a different act.
• No price on this site is attributed to a bookmaker. Prices are the draw weighting in another notation, published with the card.
• The desk writes about games it has played and software it has looked at. Where anything was supplied free, the column says so in the column.

An industry claim carries its source and the date the desk read it, inside the sentence that makes the claim. Not a footnote, not a link at the bottom: the sentence. A claim that cannot carry that does not run.

• Company figures come from filings and annual reports, with the document named.
• Where a document contradicts itself, the paper prints the range rather than choosing. Inspired Entertainment's Form 10-K for 2024 gives roughly 30,000 retail venues in one section and roughly 32,000 in another (company annual report, read 18 October 2026), so this paper writes about 30,000 to 32,000 venues and says why.
• Market estimates carry the research house and the year. Estimates of the 2025 virtual sports betting market run from about US$6.3 billion (Proficient Market Insights) to about US$22.4 billion (Precedence Research), a 3.5-fold spread produced by incompatible definitions of the phrase virtual sports (both figures read 18 October 2026). The spread is the story; a single headline figure would be the error.
• Audience figures come from the broadcaster. Product mechanics come from the operator's or supplier's own description of the product.
• Where a claim is an argument made by somebody else, it is reported as their argument and attributed, not adopted as a finding.
• Dossier figures — anything the desk compiled rather than read — carry the date they were compiled, and that date is printed with them.
• Sources sit under the story as well, with the date read, through the same template on every article.

The circuit is a simulation of 10 venues run by GP-Draw 4.2, and every page that prints it says so. A race is a weighted draw of 1,000 numbers without replacement: each runner holds a block of numbers in proportion to its price, a number is drawn once, and the screen is rendered from the order that comes out. A draw without replacement cannot produce a dead heat, and a field fixed at publication cannot produce a late scratching, so this circuit has neither.

Because the engine is ours, the test the paper sets itself is reconstruction rather than sourcing. Every card publishes the whole of what produced it.

• Circuit rows carry a day offset, not a frozen date, so the published programme runs on every day the site is up. Each page that prints circuit data also prints the as-at date.
• The same rows that render the pages are published as files: circuit.json and circuit-results.csv, listed with their licence line at downloads. They are generated from the data, not written by hand, and the build fails if they disagree with the pages.
• There is no prizemoney on this circuit. Nothing is staked, so nothing is won, and no career record, standing or profile carries a money figure.
• There are no Group grades. Group status is conferred by a principal racing authority and this circuit has none. The classes are Feature, Class A, Class B, Class C, Maiden and Trial.
• Drivers, jockeys and trainers on the circuit are engine personae — the names attached to the colours. The site states that where a reader meets them, and credits them anyway, because a result nobody is credited with is a result nobody can check.
• No photograph of a real horse, driver or jockey stands in for a simulated one. Composed frames from the simulator say so in their alt text, and no author or persona is given an invented face.

• Every form desk column states the house position in its first line: a weighted draw has no form in the predictive sense, and what follows is a reading of the published weights.
• It then does the arithmetic anyway, because the arithmetic is the part worth printing.
• Columns are signed. The ledger — every read scored against the draw that followed it — is published whether or not it flatters the writer.
• Nothing in a column is a prediction, a system, a staking plan or an edge. The words value and edge are not used as claims about what a reader can get.
• Operators describe their own products the same way. AB Trav och Galopp announced its virtual racing product by stating that each horse carries fixed odds, that the result is randomly generated, and that a new race starts every six minutes (ATG press release, 12 October 2015, read 18 October 2026).
• The disclaimer below runs on every page that carries a column or a card, not only here.

• A correction runs in the first line of the column that got it wrong, under the byline that ran it, with the date it was made. The page keeps its original publication date beside the corrected one.
• Nothing is silently edited. A figure that changes gets a line saying it changed.
• A correction to a fact is a correction. A change of opinion is not, and is not dressed as one.
• The desk has printed its own: the first correction from the industry desk reported that The Global Draw was acquired by Scientific Games on 20 April 2006 and is listed today under Light & Wonder (Scientific Games filing of 20 April 2006 and the Light & Wonder subsidiary list, both read 18 October 2026), which is not the company this paper had named.
• To ask for one, write to [email protected] or use the contact form with the subject Circuit correction, naming the page and the figure. Corrections are answered before anything else in the inbox.
• A disputed circuit figure can be checked against the seed and weighting table printed on the card before you write, and often that settles it without a correction.

• Comments are open to registered readers on news stories, analysis and race cards. Every comment is held and read by a person before it appears.
• Threads are flat. There are no nested replies, because a race card does not need an argument tree.
• A comment is rejected if it abuses somebody, promotes an operator or a tipping service, carries an affiliate link, or presents the circuit as a market a reader can beat.
• A comment correcting the paper is published and then acted on under section 5. Being right is not a reason to be moderated out.
• Comments carried over from an earlier system are reproduced as filed and marked as such.
• The desk does not edit the text of a comment. It is published or it is not.

• Any claim that a reader can beat a random draw. The result comes out of a weighted draw without replacement; reading the weights describes it and does not predict it.
• Tips presented as advice, systems, staking plans, or any figure dressed up as an expected return.
• “Bet now” in any form, including every synonym of it, and any call to open, fund or use a wagering account.
• Promo codes, bonus offers, affiliate links, operator banners inside editorial, or a price attributed to a named bookmaker.
• An industry figure without its source and the date it was read.
• A story without a date and a byline.
• A simulated race described as sport — no bravery, no wanting it more. The engine drew a number and the screen showed the order.
• Prizemoney, winnings or any money figure attached to a race on this circuit.
• An invented face, a real photograph standing in for a simulated runner, or stock imagery with nothing to do with the subject.
• Contempt for the reader who watches these screens. People have watched them for twenty years. A thing worth doing is worth recording properly.

Where this policy and a story disagree, the policy is right and the story is corrected. Write to [email protected] if you find one.