Dutch gambling regulation: KSA issues fine against NetX Betting

The KSA says the operator was offering gambling to Dutch customers without a licence.

The Netherlands.- The Dutch gambling regulator Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) has announced that it has issued a fine of €675,000 to NetX Betting. Of the total fine, €675,000 was for offering online gambling to Dutch players without a local licence. Meanwhile, the KSA also issued a €75,000 fine for NetX Betting’s policy of fining its own customers for inactivity.

The fine relates to two sites: Pferdewetten.de and Betbird.com. The KSA had first investigated Pferdewetten.de back in 2022, when it found the site to be accessible from the Netherlands. It found that the site allowed Dutch players to bet on horse racing and trotting despite not having a Dutch licence. It checked the site again and found that there were still no technical measures to block access to Dutch visitors.

At that point, it issued a penalty payment order and ordered NetX to stop accepting Dutch players. NetX complied and the website in September of last year, but the KSA later found the site to still be active and accessible, while the operator was also running Betbird.com, which was also accessible in the Netherlands.

At a hearing earlier in the year, NetX attempted to argue that betting on houses should not be classed as a game of chance like online casino gaming. It claimed that it had implemented technical measures to prevent access from Dutch players and blamed IP blocking error for the ability to access the site.

The operator also tried to defend its policy of imposing a penalty of €5 a month on players whose accounts were inactive for more than a year. It claimed that this was a standard industry practice.

KSA chairman Michel Groothuizen said: “We see that illegal providers often pay little attention to the player and do not comply with a duty of care. Here, for example, we saw the practice that players who are inactive for a long time after creating an account were given a ‘fine’ by the provider. If they do not play for a certain period of time, an amount of €5 per month is charged. So the player is punished if he does not participate in the illegal games of chance being offered. That goes beyond all bounds.”