VNLOK Takes Meta to Court as Dutch MPs Vote to Make Platforms Liable for Illegal Gambling Ads

The licensed operators' trade body has served its summons on Meta, and a day later the House of Representatives backed a motion that would let the regulator fine platforms that keep showing illegal ads after being told to remove them. The regulator, meanwhile, is recirculating a survey on how normal gambling has become.

• VNLOK, the association of licensed online gambling operators in the Netherlands, served Meta with a summons before the Amsterdam District Court on 28 September over illegal gambling advertising on Facebook and Instagram
• It asks the court to find that Meta is not meeting its obligations under the EU Digital Services Act and to order it to take measures to prevent illegal gambling ads aimed at Dutch consumers
• On 29 September the House of Representatives adopted a motion asking the government to write into the Betting and Gaming Act that a platform which keeps showing an illegal gambling ad after a removal request commits an offence the Kansspelautoriteit can fine
• VNLOK's own research found that Meta removed 11% of more than 60,000 illegal gambling ads in May and 15% in June, while most of the ads were online for less than a day
• On the same day the KSA republished a survey of 1,000 people, first released in February, in which 24% said people around them see gambling as normal and 29% said they would not dare ask for help

The Trade Body Moves From Complaint to Courtroom

VNLOK (Vergunde Nederlandse Online Kansspelaanbieders), the trade association of licensed online gambling operators, said on Monday 28 September that it has served a summons on Meta over "the large-scale distribution of illegal gambling advertisements via Facebook and Instagram". The step completes the procedure it announced in June, when it also said it would notify the European Commission and ask it to investigate Meta under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

According to VNLOK, the summons asks the court to establish that Meta does not comply with its DSA obligations and to order it to take measures to better prevent illegal gambling advertising aimed at Dutch consumers. In June it described the claim more fully, including a declaration that Meta is directly liable for the content and a penalty payment for each day of non-compliance. No hearing date has been announced, and no public response from Meta was found at the time of writing.

"We have repeatedly pointed Meta to the scale of the problem," VNLOK chairman Björn Fuchs said, in a translation of the Dutch, adding that this had produced insufficient results. The association says Meta is only its first target: illegal operators also reach Dutch players through search results, misleading redirects and Telegram channels.

The case rests on VNLOK's own monitoring. Between 94% and 97% of the gambling ads reaching Dutch Facebook and Instagram users in May and June came from operators without a Dutch licence, it reported in August. Of more than 60,000 illegal ads, Meta removed 11% in May and 15% in June, and most were online for less than a day, which VNLOK says makes removal after the fact too late. It wants Meta to verify advertisers' licences before ads run. VNLOK puts illegal online gambling at more than €1 billion a year, roughly the size of the legal market, in line with the KSA chairman's estimate this month that half of every euro Dutch consumers gamble goes to the illegal market.

Parliament Backs Fines for Platforms

The summons was timed for Tuesday's votes. The motion by Bart Bikkers of the VVD, co-signed by Tijs van den Brink (CDA) and Mohammed Mohandis (PRO), notes that the Kansspelautoriteit sends Meta thousands of removal requests a month "without this leading to structural results". It asks the government to establish in the Betting and Gaming Act that a platform which repeatedly shows illegal gambling advertising after a removal request "itself commits an offence", on which the KSA can impose a fine or an order subject to penalty payments. The House adopted it on 29 September, according to parliament's records, with State Secretary Claudia van Bruggen having signalled she was positive about it.

The House also backed a pilot with the KSA, prosecutors and police to disrupt the payment and hosting infrastructure behind illegal operators, a central list of illegal operators for platforms and payment providers to use, and a study of how the KSA could use the University of Amsterdam's open-source risk model. A total ban on gambling advertising was rejected. VNLOK welcomed the Bikkers motion but told the KSA not to wait, saying it already has the legal means to hold facilitators to account.

The KSA's Survey Is Seven Months Old

The same day, the KSA's player site OpenOverGokken published "Normalisation of gambling behaviour leads to more people who gamble". It republishes a KSA release of 19 February 2026, with the same figures from a survey of 1,000 Dutch people. It gives no fieldwork dates, pollster or weighting, and no comparison with an earlier year.

In it, 24% said people in their social circle see gambling as normal (32% of men, 16% of women), and 43% said they would be less likely to gamble if nobody around them did. Some 11% said gambling had directly affected their work, studies, relationship or sleep, 29% would not dare ask for help if they were addicted, and 75% see gambling problems as the result of bad decisions. Board chairman Michel Groothuizen said problems "rarely arise overnight and often remain invisible for a long time". The KSA announced no new measure and pointed people to OpenOverGokken, to which VNLOK members have been able to transfer players directly since 1 September.

A Motion Is Not a Law, Which Is Why VNLOK Went to Court Anyway

The Bikkers motion asks the government to legislate; it changes nothing yet. An amendment must be drafted, consulted on and passed by both chambers, and it must fit the DSA, under which the European Commission, not national regulators, supervises the systemic duties of very large platforms. The motion is framed with that in mind: it targets the repeat display of a specific ad after a specific notice, which sits close to the DSA's own rule that a host loses its protection if it fails to act on knowledge of illegal content. Whether a Dutch fine on that basis would survive a challenge by Meta is open. A civil judgment is quicker and binds Meta if VNLOK wins, so the association is running both routes.

The Removal Figures Show Why Notice and Takedown Cannot Keep Up

If most illegal ads are gone within a day and Meta removes 11% to 15% of them, the KSA's monthly notices are chasing ads that have already done their work. Regulators elsewhere have reached the same point, from Malaysia's complaint that Facebook carries most of its flagged gambling content to Google's move to require certification before gambling ads run. Meta's own policy already requires prior written permission for online gambling ads, so the ads VNLOK counted are getting past a check that exists on paper. The caveat is that the figures come from an interested party whose members lose customers to the advertisers, and a court will want to test the method behind them.

The KSA Survey Measures Attitudes, Not Harm

As a campaign document the survey is useful: it shows a taboo that stops people asking for help. It is weak evidence for its own headline. One poll of 1,000 people with no trend data cannot show that normalisation is rising or that it "leads to" more gambling, and the 43% are answering a hypothetical. It does not measure problem gambling at all, and it does not ask the question that matters most to a regulator fighting a market it says takes half of every euro: where the people who find gambling normal are playing.

The Netherlands now has a trade body in court and a parliament on record, while the regulator waits for powers it has asked for. Meta's answer to the summons will show whether it prefers to settle the question in Amsterdam or wait for the law.