KSA investigates affiliate sites for targeting self-excluded players

The Dutch gambling regulator said several affiliate sites have been created to direct players to unlicensed operations.

The Netherlands.- The Dutch gambling regulator KSA says that it is investigating several affiliate marketing sites for blatantly advertising unlicensed gambling to vulnerable consumers. The regulator said the sites appeared to have been set up to intentionally promote ways to circumvent the Netherlands’ regulated gambling offering.

The KSA said the domain names under investigation include casinozondervergunning (“casino without licence”) and casinozondercruks (“casino without Cruks” – in reference to the Netherlands’ national gambling self-exclusion system, which all licensed operators must use).

The regulator said it was concerned that the affiliate sites were deliberately advertising the fact that their offerings were unregulated as a selling point, suggesting that they were aiming to target vulnerable players who may have self-excluded. It stressed that promoting unlicensed gambling was illegal as well as the gambling offerings themselves.

The KSA has previously warned of sanctions for operators that do not correctly integrate with Cruks. It said: “Failure to check players or ignore a Cruks registration is very serious. These players registered with Cruks precisely because they have problems with gambling and are no longer in control.”

Earlier this week, the KSA reported a glitch with Cruks that was sometimes preventing people from registering and operators from performing checks. It says the malfunction has since been fixed.

The KSA said the glitch was due to a malfunction in the checks on citizen service numbers (BSNs) used to validate those who register with the system. The BSN is a unique identification number used to process data on residents. The KSA said the problem was in the BSN management facility, not in its own systems.