Michel Groothuizen, chair of the Netherlands’ gambling authority Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has called on major technology platforms including Google and Meta to work with regulators in confronting the unlicensed gambling market. The appeal places two of the world’s largest advertising and search companies at the centre of an enforcement problem that national regulators have struggled to solve alone. For operators, platforms, and compliance teams across Europe, it signals a widening of where responsibility for the grey market may fall.
What Groothuizen’s Appeal Means for Platforms and Operators
The request reframes an old problem. Regulators have long chased unlicensed operators through takedowns, fines, and payment blocking. But the demand pipeline often runs through the same handful of gatekeepers that dominate search results and social feeds. That shift matters because it moves the conversation from chasing operators to pressuring the channels that make them visible.
- Enforcement is going upstream. Instead of targeting individual unlicensed sites one by one, the KSA wants the platforms that surface and promote them to intervene at the source.
- Licensed operators in the Dutch market, who pay tax and submit to oversight, stand to benefit if unauthorised competitors lose their cheapest route to players.
- Platform liability remains the open question: co-operation requested today can harden into expectation tomorrow, and regulators across the bloc tend to borrow each other’s playbooks.
- Advertising revenue tied to gambling keywords is not trivial for search and social businesses, which complicates any voluntary clampdown.
Why the Netherlands Is Pushing Now
The Dutch online market opened under the Remote Gambling Act (Wet Kansspelen op afstand) in October 2021, creating a licensed system meant to channel players toward regulated operators. Channelisation was always the point. If too many players drift to unlicensed sites, the legal framework loses its purpose, and tax revenue and consumer protections leak out with them.
That is where the platforms enter the picture. A player searching for a specific game, or scrolling past a paid promotion, may never see the licence status behind the brand being advertised. The KSA’s argument, in effect, is that visibility equals exposure, and the companies controlling visibility cannot be neutral bystanders.
Groothuizen has framed the matter as one of co-operation rather than confrontation. Even so, the subtext is clear: if the tech firms do not act voluntarily, the pressure will not simply go away.
The Scale Problem Behind the Request
Consider the asymmetry. A national regulator operates within one jurisdiction, under one legal code, with a finite enforcement budget. A company like the social platforms operated by Meta reaches billions of users across borders, with advertising systems that approve placements at a volume no human review team could match. The mismatch is structural, not accidental.
This is why the KSA’s outreach reads as pragmatic. Blocking one unlicensed domain does little when a dozen more can buy ad space or climb search rankings within days. Co-operation with the gatekeepers, at least on paper, offers leverage that domain-level enforcement never will.
| Enforcement approach | Reach | Practical limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Domain and IP blocking | National | Operators relaunch under new domains quickly |
| Payment blocking | National | Requires cooperation from banks and processors; workarounds exist |
| Platform-level cooperation | Cross-border, demand-side | Depends on voluntary action by firms with competing commercial incentives, and no binding EU-wide mandate yet compels it |
A Market Caught Between Two Pressures
Licensed Dutch operators already carry heavy compliance costs. Advertising restrictions in the Netherlands tightened significantly after the market opened, with limits on untargeted promotion and sponsorship. Yet unlicensed rivals, operating outside those rules, can appear alongside or above compliant brands in the very channels players use most.
And while the regulator talks to platforms, the competitive distortion persists. That tension sits at the core of Groothuizen’s argument. The firms that profit from visibility, he suggests, hold a responsibility proportional to that profit.
What remains less clear is how far voluntary co-operation can go before it needs legal teeth.
How This Fits the Wider European Picture
The Dutch move does not exist in isolation. The EU’s Digital Services Act has already pushed large platforms toward greater accountability for the content and advertising they host, including obligations around illegal content and transparency in advertising systems. A regulator asking search and social companies to screen for unlicensed gambling fits comfortably within that direction of travel.
The precedent matters. If platforms co-operate in the Netherlands, other national regulators gain a template they can point to, and a reference case for their own negotiations with the search and advertising services run by Google. One jurisdiction’s informal arrangement can quietly become the baseline others demand.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly has the KSA asked Google and Meta to do?
Groothuizen has called for the platforms to co-operate with the regulator in tackling the unlicensed gambling market, broadly meaning action against the promotion and visibility of unauthorised operators through search and social channels. The precise mechanics of any such co-operation have not been detailed publicly.
Is unlicensed gambling the same as illegal gambling?
In regulatory language, the issue centres on operators working without a Dutch licence. These are unauthorised under the Remote Gambling Act, which took effect in October 2021.
Why target platforms instead of the operators themselves?
Because the operators are the moving target and the platforms are not. Unlicensed sites can relaunch under fresh domains almost overnight, while search and social companies control the demand-side channels through which most players actually find them. Addressing the gatekeeper is simply more durable.
Are the platforms obliged to comply?
The appeal is for co-operation rather than a binding order. Broader EU rules such as the Digital Services Act already impose accountability on large platforms, but a specific national mandate forcing them to screen gambling promotion is not what has been invoked here.
What to Watch Next
The immediate signal to watch is whether either company responds publicly, and in what terms. Silence would be its own answer. A measured response, by contrast, could open the door to the kind of structured arrangement that regulators in other markets will study closely.
For licensed operators, the stakes are concrete: every unlicensed brand removed from a feed or demoted in search is a marginal gain in channelisation, and channelisation is the number the Dutch framework lives or dies by.
