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About Sugar Skulls
The KVA’s statement mirrors a broader European regulatory trend where authorities are increasingly scrutinising how major internet platforms facilitate traffic to unlicensed gambling services.
In Sweden, Spelinspektionen recently flagged affiliates and social media as key channels for black market advertising and how affiliate networks redirect search traffic towards unlicensed operators.
Regulators have so far focused mainly on monitoring paid advertising. In Germany, the GGL credited an updated Google ad policy with reducing black market visibility. Yet, it acknowledged that illegal operators could still achieve visibility in organic search through SEO manipulation.
About Sugar Skulls
The press release also warned operators against complying with any payment requests from departments that aren’t legally authorised to do so.
It called for any such acts to be reported immediately to the Ministry of Finance and the Directorate General of Administrative, Judicial, State Property and Equity Revenues (DGRAD).
The DGRAD has been tasked with identifying and securing the cancellation of any irregularly issued payment notices.
About Sugar Skulls
The Loterij suggested around 200,000 Dutch citizens already engage with unauthorised platforms.
Earlier this summer, the Dutch Online Gaming Providers (VNLOK) trade body initiated legal action against Meta and lodged a formal complaint with the European Commission, accusing the social media giant of failing to prevent the widespread display of illegal online gambling advertisements targeting Dutch users on Facebook and Instagram.
According to VNLOK, the illegal online gambling market in the Netherlands now matches the size of the regulated sector, with estimated annual revenues in excess of €1 billion ($1.1 billion).
