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A court in the Netherlands has ordered Entain and Flutter units to repay around €400,000 to gamblers who bet with them on the grey market, as the spectre of player refund lawsuits creeps further across Europe.
A court in the Dutch province of Overijssel issued two rulings on Wednesday (April 17) against Bwin and PokerStars, operated by Entain and Flutter respectively.
The case against PokerStars involves gambling that took place as far back as 2006, but continued up until 2021.
An individual customer lost more than $230,705 and a further €400 mostly on poker, but also later on casino games and sports betting, according to details published by the court.
The court also found in favour of a second gambler, who wagered on Bwin between 2018 and 2019, losing more than €187,000.
It was not possible for companies outside the Netherlands to apply for a licence to offer online gambling until 2021, when new legislation was passed that opened up the market.
Both Bwin and PokerStars admitted to the court that they did not have a Dutch licence at the time the gambling took place, but argued that this should not invalidate the contract between consumer and operator, the court said.
“The court does not follow these defences and rules that the gambling agreement concluded between the parties is null and void. This means that the gambling companies must refund the lost amounts to the players,” the Overijssel District Court said in a press release.
The decisions can be appealed, but the judge ruled that the refund orders were “provisionally enforceable”, meaning that the lost money should be repaid immediately without waiting for the outcome of future proceedings.
The decisions potentially open the floodgates to a wave of further claims, with at least 50 understood to already have been filed.
A similar decision in the Austrian Supreme Court in favour of online casino consumers has seen hundreds of millions of euros in claims prosecuted successfully in Austria, while in Germany judges are also routinely finding in favour of gamblers.
The lawyer representing both plaintiffs in this week’s Dutch rulings, Benzi Loonstein, issued an ominous warning to the industry in comments published by the De Telegraaf newspaper.
“This is now the first time that losses actually have to be reimbursed by gambling providers,” he said.
“We have been working intensively on this for a year and a half now. The gambling companies have clearly ignored their duty of care,” he said, promising that more cases would follow these two rulings.
Gambling companies under pressure from player claims in Germany and Austria have increasingly retreated to Malta, arguing that players should seek to reclaim money from the country where operators were licensed and headquartered during the time when the grey market activity took place.
Maltese courts have referred one such case to the Court of Justice of the European Union, and in the meantime the national parliament has passed a controversial law in an attempt to shield its vital online gambling industry.
Known as Bill 55, the legislation essentially bans courts from transferring judgments from other EU states.
European legal experts and attorneys representing gamblers are confident the law will be struck down by Brussels. The European Commission is understood to still be investigating Bill 55, but has yet to issue a decision.
Both Entain and Flutter did not return a request to comment for the article.
