Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), the Dutch Gaming Authority, plays a crucial role in regulating the gambling industry in the Netherlands. With its Supervisory Agenda for 2025, the KSA outlines its strategic focus areas to ensure a safe, fair, and transparent gambling environment. This year, the KSA is concentrating on underage gambling, combating illegal gambling supply, monitoring advertisements, and upholding its duty of care.
The KSA has identified four key pillars to guide its efforts in 2025: preventing underage gambling, combating illegal gambling operations, overseeing advertising practices, and extending its duty of care to all gambling providers.
The KSA is determined to shield minors from gambling platforms due to growing concerns that early exposure could lead to problems in later years, with addiction being one of the worst outcomes. The KSA will partner with providers to develop age-verification policy measures. This includes enhanced identity checks and how young adults are introduced to gambling.
Illegal gambling includes operations that are unlicensed or non-compliant with the KSA framework. These operations pose risks to players due to the absence of regulatory supervision. The KSA will intensify its efforts to hunt down illegal operators, paying particular attention to those circumventing regulations by monitoring websites, promoters, and affiliate networks promoting illegal gambling.
The gambling industry is regulated to prevent misleading promotions and ensure responsible marketing. These rules are continuously refined by the KSA. The latest changes in advertising regulations aim to minimise aggressive marketing practices, particularly targeting vulnerable groups, including children and problem gamblers.
Duty of care involves the obligation of gambling platforms to protect their users from potential harm, such as addiction and financial losses. While the KSA has focused on online gambling, its concern will now extend to land-based gaming halls and casinos. This expansion aims to create a safer gambling environment across all formats.
The KSA’s fines are categorised into five bands, with values ranging from €500 to €2 million. The penalties increase proportionately according to the severity of each offence. This policy aims to deter violations by imposing heavy penalties on non-compliant operators, thereby ensuring greater adherence to the law.
The KSA will also extend its reach beyond illegal operations to include promoters and affiliates involved in unregulated gambling. By doing so, the KSA hopes to curb illegal promotions and provide consumer protection through stringent monitoring and heavy penalties.
As part of its 2025 strategy, the KSA will emphasise establishing land-based casinos alongside collaborating with online casinos, ensuring that these venues uphold the same level of care. Physical venues will be more heavily supervised to protect customers and comply with regulations.
The long-term plan aims to create a safer, sustainable gambling environment and protect the integrity of the gambling sector. The KSA will provide further guidance to operators on compliance and best practices for 2025 to help them navigate the regulatory environment.
Clearly, if advertising violations are directly correlated to the strictness of the rules, the KSA is mindful to ensure that regulations are enforced. Operators will be subjected to compliance checks to ensure they meet advertising standards.
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