In an interview with Casino nieuws dated 30 October, Michel Groothuizen, chairman for the Dutch gambling regulator KSA, said website blocking for illegal sites does not work as a measure for tackling the black market, at least in its current form.
The KSA chairman said it can take up to a year to have an illegal site blocked in the Netherlands. The process is lengthy because cases have to be put before a judge in court.
“If we want to shut down a site, that is theoretically possible,” Groothuizen told Casino nieuws. “But that is a process that sometimes takes months or more than a year. A judge is involved in that.
“I am jealous of the colleagues of the Authority for Online Terrorist and Child Pornographic Material, the ATKM. In some cases, they can have things removed from the internet within an hour.”
This measure is particularly difficult to carry out on operators that are licensed elsewhere and therefore fully blocking their site from the internet is not possible.
Elsewhere, he said the regulator was looking for a way to operate fake gambling accounts. This would be used to monitor operators’ interactions with minors and other vulnerable groups.
This policy was requested by the KSA to the government in June 2023 in an open letter that laid out four key requests for the government to consider in its review of the country’s gambling regulations.
Review of Dutch Remote Gambling Act “is imminent”
According to Groothuizen, the review is nearing completion. And the government has agreed the regulator should have anonymous access to online accounts.
“The registration process at legal online casinos is so strictly regulated that we can only act effectively if we have an ‘existing’ fake ID, including the associated bank account,” he said. “This authority is currently reserved exclusively for the police and the AIVD [but] we strongly advocate this and in my opinion there are also many supporters within politics who consider this desirable.”
On the regulatory review, the chairman said he expects the state secretary to formalise a package of new regulations in line with the review’s findings, although he is unsure whether new measures would be implemented all at once or one by one.
“If it would be easier to do a number of separate things, I would be fine with that too. I don’t have a very principled view on that. But I think it is quite useful and sensible to do it in one package. I say that more as a former justice official than as the chairman of the Gaming Authority.
Blanket ad ban being considered in regulatory review
Politicians have been placing continued pressure on the sector through stricter measures that stakeholders have warned could see operators exit the Dutch market.
One such measure is the upcoming gambling tax hike. Answering questions in parliament in September, Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof said the 7.3% tax increase aimed to “discourage gambling”.
A total ban on gambling advertising is also being considered. This was reaffirmed by state secretary Teun Struycken in a letter dated 10 October, updating parliament on the state of the regulatory review.
In it he said a study into the initial effects of the ban on non-targeted advertising was being carried out. He expects a first draft to be ready in H1 2025.
