AI is learning about your brand. Who is telling the story?
Your customers are asking AI which casino to try, or which bookmaker has the best odds this weekend. The answer they get is shaped by what AI knows about your brand — the content, coverage and conversations that exist across the web. We have tracked which brands AI recommends to UK players, week after week. No operator holds more than a small share. The opportunity is still open. Getting into that shortlist isn’t just about your website or SEO. AI looks beyond your own channels to the wider story being told about your brand. That is why Digital PR matters. The right coverage helps build the reputation, authority and associations that influence what AI recommends.
Nobody owns the answer
Ask AI for a UK online casino and the recommendations spread thin. On our tracking to 2 July 2026, LeoVegas leads on just 4.6% of recommendations, Casumo on 4.1% and Ladbrokes on 3.8%. The leading group sits within a couple of points of each other. No runaway brand.
Betting is a little more concentrated, but the story holds. In football, bet365 leads on 9.3% over the last four weeks, with William Hill, Ladbrokes and Betfred close behind. Even the leader takes fewer than one in ten. Horse racing looks the same: bet365 on 7.1%, the field packed in behind.
A fragmented market is an open one. The order is not set, so it can still be moved.
You can see the full rankings in our research on casino, football betting and horse racing betting, and how AI perceives gambling brands more widely in our lottery perceptions study.
Why AI names the brands it does
AI is not picking the biggest brands, or the ones with the most sponsorship. It picks the ones the web describes in the right way. Your brand has a CV it did not write. Journalists, review sites and roundups wrote it. AI reads it, and recommends from it. Ask about bonuses and you get the brands the bonus pages talk about. Ask what players rate and you get the brands players discuss. What matters now is what the web says about you, and in whose words. You can rank all you like on Google; if that CV is thin, AI has little to go on, and it names someone else.
Two ways to improve your CV
There are two levers, and they work together. The first is your own content: the pages on your site, written around what you are best at, so AI can read and repeat it. That is the discipline we call AI SEO.
The second is earned coverage: getting cited in the national titles, review desks and roundups that AI reads and trusts. That is the job of digital PR. The same coverage that builds authority with Google can also influence the AI answer, so it works twice.
Brands with real budgets are often close to the conversation without being in it. They have spent on being seen. The media AI trusts still has little to say about them.
The hard part is the idea
Earned coverage sounds simple until you try it. A journalist will not run a piece about your new welcome offer. They will run a story their readers care about, that happens to come from you.
That is the craft, and it is what our Digital PR webinar covers: how to find the story hiding in your brand, tell the pitchable idea from the one that gets ignored, and take a concept all the way to a headline. We pull apart real campaigns from betting, casino and bingo brands, including what they cost and what they returned. If you want the examples first, we have written up five that earned their coverage and the idea behind each. [Link to Blog 2 once published]
Right now, that shortlist is all other brands. Right now, many of the brands in that shortlist are your competitors. No one owns it yet, so there is still room to get on it. It comes down to the right coverage, and that starts with the right idea.
The webinar is where we show you how.
Find the story worth telling
Our webinar, Digital PR: From Idea to Headline, takes you from spotting the story in your brand to landing the coverage, pulling real campaigns apart along the way, including what they cost and what they returned.
Free, 30 minutes, two sessions with the same content:
- Tuesday 28 July, 11:00–11:30 (BST)
- Thursday 6 August, 11:30 – 12:00 (BST)
Discover more and sign up →
Source: Receptional AI-visibility tracking, share of ChatGPT recommendations to UK players. Football and horse racing: four weeks to 2 July 2026. Casino: 19 June to 2 July 2026. Figures cover operators and betting intermediaries; brand shares wobble week to week.
