KSA goes after non-complaint operators over advertisement

The Dutch Gaming Authority has followed through with the untargeted advertising ban that was introduced on July 1, 2023, and has warned several operators over potential breaches of the measure. According to the Kansspelautoriteit, as the watchdog is known in Dutch, the operators in question offered unsolicited advertising.

One of the providers suggested that players could win a special T-shirt with the name and the logo of the company. However, the watchdog has found an issue with that as offering merchandise is also a prohibited form of advertising that falls under the measures introduced earlier this year. It mostly has to do with the fact that such merchandise and the logo can be seen in public places, which is prohibited.

The authority has also taken an issue with the way two operators have used the rule about "neutral advertising" when involving club and sports sponsorships. The rules tend to be somewhat more demanding here, but they come down to the fact that sports organizations cannot promote operators they partner up with or may do so only through "neutral statements."

According to the Kansspelautoriteit, the cases that it focused on in two operators were not forms of neutral expression and therefore had violated the ban. One of the operators encouraged visitors of a sports event to check out the app of the partner operator.

The Dutch-regulated market has posed challenges to both operators outside and inside of it. For the most part, the regulator has been able to guide the market properly, but there have been inroads with some companies. This past month, the Kansspelautoriteit went after many companies that it alleged were operating and offering games of chance without the appropriate license in the country.

The majority of these companies denied the allegations and called out the regulator for what they saw as a "flawed" methodology in establishing whether an operator was indeed targeting players in the Netherlands. In the meantime, the KSA has announced that its long-standing chairman, René Jansen will be stepping down from his position and the watchdog has launched a search for his successor.

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