Gambling regulator goes after Unibet in the Netherlands

The Dutch Gambling Authority has taken several enforcement actions this week, and prominently against Optdeck Service Limited which has been fined €400,000, the regulator confirmed in an official press statement shared on its website.

Unibet targeted over Cruks failures

Optdeck is better known under its trade name, Unibet, an established and respected casino and sports betting brand, which has been fined over unwittingly admitting players onto its gambling platforms, even though the aforementioned had used the national self-exclusion program, Cruks.

The onus falls onto operators to ensure that players who are registering on their websites are not listed in the Cruks system, and failure to do so triggers further investigation and possibly – enforcement action as in this case.

The regulator was tipped in mid-2023 that Unibet had failed to conduct several such checks, resulting in the admittance of self-excluded players during the 2022 World Cup.

Regulator goes after FreeBitco.in in separate case

In a similar enforcement action from this week, the Dutch Gambling Authority has gone after the Curacao-based FCB BV, which is running the FreeBitco.in website, and operating in the Netherlands with the necessary licenses.

According to the regulator, there have been several investigations establishing the website’s breaches of local laws conducted between January 2023 and November 2024. The regulator insisted that FreeBitco.in has not taken sufficient step to block access from Dutch IPs, something that the company has denied repeatedly.

The regulator has also imposed a weekly penalty of €280,000 per week up to €840,000 in total until such a time that the company complies. FBC BV has objected to the penalty and said that it had complied.

KSA Chair Michel Groothuizen has vowed to take a tougher course of action against unregulated entities in the Dutch iGaming market. However, many companies insist that the regulator is going to extraordinary lengths to circumnavigate IP blocks with the help of VPNs and fine operators over that.

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