Merkur fined by Dutch regulators over Cruks breach

The Dutch Gaming Authority or Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) has hit Merkur Casino Almere with a€45,000 fine. The casino has been fined in relation to breaches pertaining to the country’s self-exclusion gambling program, Cruks, or the Central Register of Exclusion for Games of Chance. According to the KSA, Merkur Casino Almere allowed a self-excluded gambler to access the casino and therefore failed a compliance check.

The investigation established that the person was able to access Merkur Casino Almere on nine occasions in the period between February 17, 2022, and March 2, 2022, before it was discovered that he had been excluded from gambling on games of chance. Employees of the casino were unable to verify whether the person had indeed self-excluded because, at the time of running the verification, they received an error message. This prevented them from confirming whether the person had indeed self-excluded.

However, the regulator contended that when this was the case, the person should have been denied access to the casino instead of being allowed to gamble anyway. Cruks is an important part of the regulation regime in the Netherlands. The country has been stepping up its consumer protection measures for years now, with an overhauled version of Cruks released just recently.

Under Dutch law, all gambling providers that hold a license from the KSA must deny access to consumers and gamblers who have self-excluded in the past. Cruks is an obligatory licensing condition for license holders in the fast-developing Dutch iGaming market. The KSA recently assessed the state of state in the regulated gambling market, concluding that there have been many positive developments over the past years of regulation.

A total of 859,000 players are said to have registered with legal providers of games of chance. The numbers put the current level of growth for Dutch iGaming at 13%-15% every year. Meanwhile, the number of average players per month is somewhat lower than the total number of unique players registered with licensed operators – 365,000.

Another positive trend is the fact that younger Dutch people tend to lose only €54 on average compared to €143 for older demographics. This means that the measures the KSA has been introducing to ensure the safety of consumers have been working. Those measures do include fines on occasion.

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