Dutch gambling review blasts “naïve” approach to duty of care

The review of the Dutch Remote Gambling Act has found that open standards have led to major differences between providers.

The Netherlands.- The Dutch government’s review of the country’s Remote Gambling Act has concluded that responsible gambling measures are insufficient. It said that the current regulations had failed to create a safe and sustainable market and that players were not being sufficiently protected from harm.

The three-year review was mandated as part of the Remote Gambling Act, which paved the way for the launch of regulated online gambling in the Netherlands in October 2021. The review notes that several measures have been taken since the launch of the market, including the introduction of a ban on untargeted gambling advertising from July 1 2023, but it said that these measures had been introduced too late.

The report states: “We conclude the Act has not yet contributed to a responsible and verifiable gambling offer to the extent that it can be said that the policy objectives of the online gambling policy will be achieved in the short or long term. The policy has created a large group of new players, including many young adults.

“Based on the policy and current implementation, it can be expected, especially in this group, that harm will occur because of the policy, not only financial harm, but potentially also great personal suffering as a result.”

Particular criticisms include a lack of use of addiction prevention representatives, the way that pending limits function and the decision to trust operators to oversee their own duty of care. On this topic, the report is particularly critical, stating: “Placing the care for online gambling players in the hands of parties that offer an addictive product and have to compete with each other for market share, which gives them a financial incentive to retain players for as long as possible, has been naïve.

“These open standards have led to major differences between providers. In a licensing system with multiple licence-holders, providers must compete for market share. This creates a financial incentive not to strictly implement duty of care: licence-holders with strict interventions could lose players to competitors.”

The review did find some positives, commending the creation of an Addiction Prevention Fund (VPF) and the national gambling self-exclusion system Cruks. But even these were deemed to be merely “partially sufficient”. And while operators’ anti-money laundering measures were found to be solid, it raised concerns about a lack of information sharing to prevent match fixing.

Meanwhile, data protection measures were found to be sufficient, but the report raises concerns about gambling advertising despite the wide-ranging ban. It also said that the national gambling regulator KSA’s enforcement against the illegal market was “not yet proceeding as desired” because “the enforcement instruments the KSA has at its disposal do not sufficiently match the characteristics and approach of the illegal providers.”

The report suggests that “better enforcement against the illegal market, making it less easy to find and less attractive, can create space to also regulate the licensed offering more strictly without a decrease in attractiveness leading to de-channelisation”.

The report recommends that the government make a single update to the Remote Gambling Act rather than multiple changes. It will be the task of the secretary of state for legal protection, Teun Struycken, to decide if changes should be made through legislation or ministerial regulations. Struycken has previously been in favour of calls to ban online slots completely.