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The Dutch online gambling industry can expect a spending cap on online gambling, with opportunities for loosening it with something like affordability or addiction-prevention checks, officials seem to agree.
Proposed loss limits were a big topic at a Gaming in Holland gambling update in The Hague on Wednesday (December 14), with details yet to come.
The proposal comes as advertising rules are set to be tightened next year following complaints about excessive advertising in the months after new legislation for online gambling came into effect on October 1, 2021, and the industry is being pressed to better use data to prevent gambling problems.
The Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) chair Rene Jansen would not guess at what levels such caps might be set at, though he noted that Sweden had set limits at which operators must gather information about potential addiction problems if a player loses around €930 a month.
Mandatory caps could be as simple as a level at which operators must contact a player and say “what’s wrong?”, he said.
But as part of a wider review, it is likely there will be more “hard and fast” rules about when to contact gamblers who seem to be developing a problem, Jansen said.
In September, Jansen called for spending limits following an August report on practices in other European Union countries and the matter is now with the ministry of justice and security, which oversees gambling issues.
Nederlandse Loterij chief executive Niels Onkenhout broadly endorsed the initiative, while saying he wished a way could be developed to track players across company limits to “avoid problem players shopping from operator to operator”.
But such a measure has proven complicated in Belgium and Germany, so part of the answer might involve cooperation among operators, he said.
With the first full year of legalised online gambling almost completed, officials surveyed a mixed picture.
There are 24 licensees so far, less than might have been expected, but there is an estimated 85 percent channelisation rate, above the target of 80 percent, Jansen said.
Improvements to the CRUKS self-exclusion programme launch in January, with nearly 30,000 sign-ups so far and 300 new additions every week, he said.
But Jansen said operators’ anti-money laundering and terrorist financing policies seem to be lacking, with 70 percent of AML assessments ruled inadequate, and some operators are failing in their duty of care.
“We have seen players losing tens of thousands of money within a few weeks”, he said.
In one case, a player under the age of 30 lost €114,000 in six weeks, Jansen said.
“There are too many incidents”, he said. “Operators are still struggling with intervention software.”
Duty of care regulations have been principle-based, but may need to be made more specific to prevent the unintended consequences of the most diligent operators “being punished by losing market share”, said Fedor Meerts, representing the ministry of justice and security.
Jansen outlined the regulator’s efforts to stop the black-market intrusion.
It monitors the top 100 biggest unlicensed operators by IP address visits, has warned 150 unlicensed operators and has seen about 140 of them block Dutch players, he said.
He suggested that there will soon be announcements of fines directed at those that refuse to comply.
The KSA has been consulting with Malta regulators, seeking to gain their cooperation in stopping Malta licensees from soliciting Dutch residents.
It has also been pressuring suppliers, affiliates and payment providers to stop doing business with unlicensed operators, Jansen said.
But looming over the industry is an expected ban on “non-targeted” advertising, which will severely limit marketing opportunities and therefore jeopardise gains in channelisation, said Eric Konings, a consultant with the Netherlands Online Gambling Association (NOGA).
For example, it would rule out most land-based ads, he said.
Advocates of gambling advertising bans have suggested that it is “evil,” but “if it’s evil, it’s a necessary evil”, he told the audience.
Gambling attorney Justin Franssen said such a ban would upend some applicants’ entire business plan: those who have had no previous presence in the Netherlands and who need advertising to introduce themselves.
“They should think hard if they want to get into the market if the restrictions come out in the way it has been suggested”, he said.
“I’m not going to say ‘forget it,’ but it becomes incredibly difficult to compete with existing operators”, Franssen said.
Some prominent NOGA members are in a different category, still lacking licences but looking to re-introduce themselves.
Anyone without a licence was forced to pull out of the market after licensing was launched, and many operators were subject to a KSA-imposed “cooling-off period” during which applicants were not allowed to apply after they were deemed to have been improperly offering gambling to Dutch residents.
Big brand names like Betsson, Flutter Entertainment’s PokerStars and Entain’s Bwin have yet to obtain licences.
The government also passed up a chance to drop 29 percent tax rates to 25 percent, instead imposing a rise to 29.5 percent starting January 1 and Jansen also pointed out that the regulator had given its first fine to a licensee in ten years, without mentioning names.
He was apparently referring to an August 2021 €10,000 fine of Lotto, a brand of Nederlandse Loterij for displaying lottery ads on a website targeting minors.
“We did not agree”, said Onkenhout, CEO of the state-owned lottery.
But, he said, “they are in the driver’s seat”, so the lottery did not appeal the fine.
