Running Affiliate Sites Across Five Licensed Markets: What Changes per Country and What Does Not

An affiliate who has only worked one regulated market tends to treat its rules as the rules. The second market corrects that within a week. Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Spain and Great Britain are the licensed European countries an English-speaking affiliate most often looks at next, and they share more than they differ: a national licence, a national self-exclusion register, and a regulator that reaches you through the operator's contract rather than directly. The differences land in three places — the copy you may publish, the deal you can sign, and the net revenue your commission is calculated on — and each is easy to miss until a program manager points it out. This post sorts what stays constant from what changes per country, with a worked example for each.

The page-level rules for four of these countries are covered in depth in the affiliate compliance guide for the UK, Germany, Sweden and Spain. This is the operating view.

What stays the same in every licensed market

• You promote licensed operators only. Each country has a register: Spelinspektionen's licence register in Sweden, Spillemyndigheden's list of licence holders in Denmark, the GGL whitelist in Germany, the DGOJ register in Spain and the Gambling Commission's public register in Great Britain. A brand licensed in Malta but not locally is not a brand you can list for that country's readers.
• The rules reach you through the operator. None of the five licenses affiliates as such. Each holds the operator responsible for what is published on its behalf, and the operator passes that responsibility on through the affiliate agreement, together with a right to terminate.
• Self-excluded players are off limits. Spelpaus, ROFUS, OASIS, the RGIAJ and GamStop all exist, and nothing you publish may be aimed at someone registered with them.
• A national gaming tax comes off before your share is calculated. The rate and the base differ by country; the deduction itself does not go away.
• The minimum age is 18 in all five.

What changes: the copy rule each country enforces

Copy is where the five diverge most, and a page written for one country can be non-compliant in the next without a single word being inaccurate. One rule per country does most of the work.

Sweden: the moderation duty

Swedish gambling marketing must observe moderation, and a licensee may offer a bonus only on the first occasion a player plays with it. The first rule turns superlatives and urgency into the language a Swedish regulator tests against. The second means a monthly roundup of new bonuses describes offers each reader can take once per operator, not a rolling calendar. A national site such as a Swedish-language comparison of Swedish-licensed casinos, sportsbooks and poker rooms shows what that produces in practice: a single welcome offer per operator, in kronor, from the licensed list only.

Denmark: the terms travel with the offer

Danish rules cap a bonus at DKK 1,000, limit wagering to ten times deposit plus bonus, give the player at least 60 days to meet it, and require the key terms to be presented where the bonus is marketed. For an affiliate the last point is the one that changes the page. A comparison row that says "100% up to 1,000 kr" and nothing else is the kind of row the Danish rules are written to stop. A Danish league page such as Superligaen odds and welcome offers at Danish-licensed bookmakers carries the wagering requirement in its own column beside each offer, which is the shape a Danish row needs.

Germany: advertising limits, and a rule that decides the deal

Three clauses of the 2021 State Treaty on Gambling shape a German site. Advertising for virtual slots, online poker and online casino games is barred on broadcast and on the internet between 06:00 and 21:00. Advertising may not create the impression of editorially produced content. And for games that self-excluded players may not take part in — in practice, all of them — no variable remuneration may be agreed or paid for affiliate links, in particular nothing turnover-, deposit- or stake-dependent. That third clause decides the deal more than the page: German deals are usually written as a fixed payment per qualifying player rather than as revenue share. A German page comparing sportsbooks that hold a German licence is built from the whitelist and nothing else.

Spain: what the decree still governs

Royal Decree 958/2020 names affiliates in its scope. The Supreme Court's 2024 rulings removed its restrictions on new-customer promotions, so welcome offers can be promoted again. What remains is a transparency regime — minimum deposit, amount to wager, deadline, and whether the credit is withdrawable or bet-only, all stated clearly — together with the bar on promotional activity aimed at self-excluded or at-risk players. The decree's best-known feature, the window that confines gambling advertising on radio and television to between 01:00 and 05:00, still governs broadcast. Article 23.1, which dealt with advertising through information-society services, was among the provisions annulled, so for a web page it is the transparency articles that do most of the binding. If you produce video or audio for Spanish audiences, read the current consolidated text before planning a schedule. A Spanish page such as La Liga odds and offers from DGOJ-licensed bookmakers shows the same comparison written in Spanish for players in Spain.

Great Britain: socially responsible content

The CAP Code's gambling section requires marketing to be socially responsible and rules out content of strong appeal to under-18s, and the Gambling Commission's licence conditions make the operator answerable for its affiliates. Two 2026 changes reach offer copy directly: since 19 January, wagering requirements are capped at ten times the bonus, and a single promotion may no longer combine gambling products. A page still describing a "bet £10, get 50 free spins" offer is describing something a licensee can no longer run.

One tracker per country, not one per brand

The most common structural mistake on a site that covers several countries is one tracking link per brand, reused on every page in every language. It looks tidy, and it breaks three things.

• The deal. One operator group can pay a different commission model per country: a fixed amount per player where revenue share is barred, revenue share elsewhere, different tiers in each. A single tracker attaches every player to whichever deal it was issued under.
• Attribution. Programmes usually issue a separate campaign or tracker per country and report by it. One shared link means you cannot see which country's pages produce depositing players, which is the number that tells you where to spend next.
• Carryover. If negative carryover runs per tracker, a bad month in one country can cancel a good month in another.

Worked example: one pooled tracker against two separate ones

Illustrative figures. A brand pays 30% revenue share in Sweden and in Denmark. In one month the Swedish players produce net revenue of minus €800, because one of them won big, and the Danish players produce plus €1,200.

• One pooled tracker: net revenue €400, commission 30% × €400 = €120.
• Separate trackers, carryover per tracker: Denmark pays 30% × €1,200 = €360. Sweden pays nothing and carries minus €800 into its next month.

The separate setup pays €240 more this month. The Swedish deficit is still owed against future Swedish revenue, so over a long run the two totals can converge, but the separate setup pays earlier and never lets one country's variance hold up another country's commission. Whether carryover runs per tracker, per brand or per account is worth a written answer from the program manager before you build. Tracking mechanics, including sub-IDs for page-level reporting inside each country's tracker, are in affiliate tracking and postbacks explained.

Net revenue is taxed differently in each country

Revenue share is a percentage of net revenue, and most programmes define net revenue after gaming tax. The tax is national, so the same gross revenue gives a different commission base in each country. Illustrative: €10,000 of gross gaming revenue from casino players, a 30% share, and no other deductions.

• Spain, 20% of net gaming revenue: base €8,000, commission €2,400.
• Sweden, 22%: base €7,800, commission €2,340.
• Denmark, 28%: base €7,200, commission €2,160.
• Great Britain, Remote Gaming Duty at 40% from April 2026: base €6,000, commission €1,800.
• Germany: the 5.3% tax falls on stakes, not on revenue. On slots returning 96%, €10,000 of gross revenue implies €250,000 of stakes and €13,250 of tax, more than the revenue itself. Revenue share is off the table there in any case, for the reason above.

The point is not that one country is better. It is that a revenue-share percentage quoted without its country means little: on these numbers the same 30% pays a third more in Spain than in Great Britain. Other deductions — bonus costs, payment fees, admin fees — differ by programme, and five ways of defining net revenue on the same month of play are worked through in five net revenue definitions, one month of play.

Why a national site beats one global site in a licensed market

A single international site with a country switcher is cheaper to build and harder to make work in a licensed market. Four reasons:

• The operator list is national. A licensed-market page may list only that country's licensees. On a global site every list has to be filtered per country, and every leak — an offshore brand on a Swedish page — is a compliance problem, not a layout bug.
• The rules are on the page. Danish terms beside the offer, Spanish transparency, Swedish moderation, British single-product promotions: the copy differs per country, not only the language.
• Search is local. Readers search in their own language, for their own league, in their own currency. A page on Allsvenskan odds in kronor competes for a Swedish query; a translated section of an international page usually does not.
• Programmes approve per country. Operators often approve an affiliate country by country and want to see a site built for that country's readers before they issue its trackers.

The counterexample is instructive. For readers in countries without a ring-fenced national licence, a multi-country site is the natural shape, because the same internationally licensed operators serve many countries and the useful job is to say which accept which. An international sportsbook comparison organised by country shows that model: one list of international books, with country pages that filter it. It works there for exactly the reason it fails in Sweden or Germany — the operator list is not national. The structural side of running several language versions, including the doorway-page risk of going wide too quickly, is in one market deep or many markets wide.

Reading a multi-country sub-affiliate programme

A sub-affiliate programme pays you a share of what the affiliates you refer earn, and one that covers several countries inherits every difference above. Six questions to answer from the terms before you promote it:

1. Is your share a percentage of the referred affiliate's commission, or of the net revenue behind it? For a referred affiliate earning €2,000 a month at a 30% share, 5% of the commission is €100; 5% of the €6,667 of net revenue behind it is €333.
2. Does the base differ per country? If the referred affiliate is paid a fixed amount per player in Germany and revenue share elsewhere, your second-tier income behaves like two different products.
3. Which countries are excluded, and does the exclusion follow the player's country or the referred affiliate's?
4. Is negative carryover pooled across the referred affiliate's countries, and does it pass through to your share?
5. In which currency is the share calculated and paid, and at whose exchange rate?
6. Does the share last for the life of the referred account, or stop after a fixed period or below an activity threshold?

The second-tier arithmetic in full, including how a referred affiliate's own deal changes what you earn, is in sub-affiliate programs explained.

Common questions

Do I need a separate domain for each country?

No law requires one. What each country does require is its own operator list, its own copy and, in practice, its own trackers. A national domain makes that separation obvious to readers and to program managers; subfolders can work, as long as nothing leaks between them.

Can German traffic be paid on revenue share?

Not for games that self-excluded players are barred from, which covers the licensed products. Expect a fixed payment per qualifying player and model your cash flow on that.

Does the gaming tax come out of my commission?

Usually, through the definition of net revenue. Read the definition in each agreement: some deduct gaming tax, bonus costs and fees, some deduct only some of them, and the difference in a high-tax country is large.

Which of these countries is the easiest to start in?

The one whose language you write natively. The copy rules can be learned; native-quality writing in a market where readers can tell the difference cannot be bought cheaply.

What we would do this week

1. List every tracker you use and the countries whose pages carry it; any tracker used in more than one country is the first to split.
2. Ask each program manager in writing which commission model applies in each country, and whether carryover is pooled across them.
3. Recalculate one month of revenue share per country after that country's gaming tax, so you compare deals on the base you are actually paid on.
4. Match every operator on each country page against that country's register.