KSA Chairman: Half of Every Euro Goes Illegal and the Netherlands Is Too Small

Kansspelautoriteit chairman Michel Groothuizen says it is "naïve" to think a national regulator can beat a cross-border black market that costs the state more than €500m a year in tax, and that parliament barely mentioned Europe.

• Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) chairman Michel Groothuizen says half of every euro Dutch consumers gamble goes to the illegal market and the state loses "well over half a billion" in tax a year, in a column published on 11 September after parliament's annual gambling debate
• Fines in the tens of millions are "not even a fraction" of the tax illegal operators would have owed, are levied on companies that change legal identity faster than they appear, and are rarely paid by firms based in the Comoros and similar jurisdictions
• One illegal site posed as 113.nl, the Netherlands' suicide prevention service, and most illegal operators actively target people registered in the Cruks self-exclusion register
• The KSA is pressing technology platforms and the financial sector to cut off illegal operators, but Groothuizen says the Netherlands is "far too small" to move global companies alone and needs Europe
• Parliament discussed an advertising ban, a licence cap, a central login portal and an age limit of 21, while the state secretary said no mechanism yet exists to force internet providers to block foreign domains, according to Slotbeats

The Regulator Tells Parliament It Debated the Wrong Scale

The chairman of the Dutch gambling regulator has used the week after parliament's annual gambling debate to argue that the House is fighting an international criminal market with national tools, and that the one lever that would work was barely mentioned.

Writing on the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) website on 11 September, Michel Groothuizen said the debate had been constructive and that many of his concerns were shared: improved player protection, restricting the number of licence holders and an expanded, faster advertising ban all featured, alongside ideas such as a central login portal for legal operators. Some members were more enthusiastic about raising the minimum age to 21 than he was, he wrote, and expected more from limiting the number of licensees than he did. He welcomed the call for a tool to block illegal websites and the state secretary's willingness to look at using false identities in investigations.

What he missed, "from almost all the spokespeople", was a focus on international capacity. "Illegal gambling is an unprecedentedly large and complex problem," he wrote. "Of every euro the Dutch gamble, half goes to the illegal market." The turnover of the global illegal gambling market is larger than the GDP of any country except the United States and China, he said, and the public image of foreign firms with sound businesses that occasionally attract a Dutch player "has to go".

Fines That Are Not Paid, Sites That Impersonate a Helpline

The unpaid tax, "a loss of well over half a billion", is not the biggest problem, according to Groothuizen. Worse is that illegal operators take no responsibility for players. The KSA recently reported a site carrying gambling advertising that posed as 113.nl, the Dutch suicide prevention helpline, and he said most illegal operators actively target people who already have a gambling problem and have registered in Cruks, the national self-exclusion register. Their message, he wrote, is: get around your Gokstop, keep gambling with us.

Enforcement, he acknowledged, has limits. Regulators across the EU impose fines running into the tens of millions, but those are "not even a fraction" of the tax the operators would have paid had they been legal, they are imposed on parties that change legal form faster than they pop up, and when the KSA does identify them they turn out to be based in the Comoros or elsewhere beyond reach. "Fines actually being paid is therefore not much of a thing." The KSA has instead shifted to making sites harder to find and blocking payments, which means asking the big technology companies not to make their platforms and search engines available to "this kind of large-scale crime", and talking to the financial sector. "Against these kinds of globally operating tech and financial companies, however, we as the Netherlands are far too small," he wrote. "Inevitably we need Europe to bring such parties to cooperate with us."

"In my view, it is naïve to cling to the idea that a well-regulated legal national market and a national regulator are enough to tackle this problem. We are fighting a global network of ruthless criminal organisations with dedicated community police officers, when we should really be deploying an international investigative service."

Slotbeats reports that during the debate the state secretary for legal protection warned that no mechanism currently exists to compel internet providers to block foreign domains or to collect fines the KSA imposes, and that two parties, the SGP and the CDA, called for a complete ban on online gambling.

The Column Is an Argument Against the Reform Package as Much as for Europe

Read alongside the government's near-total advertising ban and five-year harm plan, the chairman's message is pointed. Every measure parliament spent its time on, the ad ban, the licence cap, the age limit, the login portal, acts on the legal half of the market, and Groothuizen's figures say the other half is already illegal and growing. He is careful not to oppose the reforms, but his scepticism about the age limit and the licence cap is on the record, and the implicit argument is that tightening the regulated market without the means to hit the unregulated one is how the channelisation rate falls further. The Netherlands opened its online market in 2021 with channelisation as the stated objective. A regulator saying that half of spend has already left is saying that objective is being lost.

A National Regulator Asking to Be Superseded Is a Rare Thing

Regulators do not usually argue that they are too small. The KSA has spent the year reporting thousands of illegal ads to Meta, watching the state lottery take a Curaçao-licensed operator to court and dealing with a broadcaster walking Cruks-excluded players into casinos, and its chairman has concluded that none of it changes the arithmetic without leverage over the platforms and payment rails that illegal operators depend on. That leverage, in his account, only exists at European level. It is a striking position for a national authority, arriving in the same week the EU's securities regulator set out its own cross-border concerns about prediction markets, and it puts the KSA in the unusual position of lobbying its own parliament to hand part of the fight to Brussels. Whether the House, which he says has not grasped this, agrees will decide whether the reform package protects a shrinking legal market or a growing one.

The Netherlands has one of Europe's most active regulators. Its chairman has just said that is not enough, and put a number on the gap.