NETHERLANDS Law and Practice Contributed by: Alan Littler, Justin Franssen and Chris Adriaansz, Franssen Tolboom
ed to be difficult), concrete legislative proposals for the aforementioned goals are not foreseen before the second half of 2026. This uncertainty also applies to Parliamentary motions that already passed Parliament in October 2024 but are still awaiting their transposition into a legislative proposal. The following are the most notable motions: • expanding liability of gambling companies vis-à-vis players with regards to responsible gambling; • additional measures against illegal online casinos targeting Dutch players; • prohibition on games of chance with an estab- lished very high risk (including online slots); and • ban on max bet buttons and turbo buttons. End of Sports Sponsoring for Remote Gambling Licence Holders On 31 June 2025, the transitional regime for sports sponsoring ended. This meant that the prohibition on advertising extended to sponsorship of (teams of) ath- letes, clubs, competitions, and sports shirts – in addi- tion to the pre-existing ban on untargeted advertising, and sponsorship of TV programmes and non-sports events (see 9.4 Restrictions on Advertising ). Black Market Growth for Remote Gambling Whilst the overall market for remote gambling saw growth in 2024, figures from the NGA and H2 Gam- bling Capital show a sharp decline in the channeli- sation rate for the legal market in terms of GGR. Of the total GGR of the remote gambling market in 2024 (EUR1.458 billion) around 50% was estimated to go to the licensed market. For 2026, H2 Gambling Capital expects a further rise of 10% GGR for the illegal mar- ket, and a further decline in the channelisation rate for the legal market to 47% (with a decline of total GGR for the legal market of 3%). Additional Licence (Application) Requirements for Remote Gambling Finally, 2025 saw the adoption of the Remote Gam- bling Licensing Policy Rules 2026. These policy rules will apply to all licences submitted as of 1 January 2026, and thus will govern applications from existing licence holders who seek to acquire a licence to fol- low on from their first licence once that expires after
its five-year lifetime. Interesting additions to this pro- cess are: • the requirement to submit a “lessons learnt” docu- ment in light of breaches of the regulatory regime during the licensed period; • the requirement for the applicant to detail how it will give effect to the open norms around responsi- ble gambling in its RG Policy; and • additional licence conditions regarding the obliga- tion to execute final and immediately enforceable judgments – this relates, in particular, but seem- ingly not exclusively, to obligations which arise from offering gambling services, such as provid- ing player data (presumably data subject access requests (DSARs) under the General Data Protec- tion Regulation (GDPR)), paying out winnings and repaying losses. Land-Based Licensing Regimes From time to time a discussion pops up concerning the land-based licences that are reallocated to incum- bent licence holders, or are otherwise indefinite, and where these licence holders are largely state-owned (see 2.2 Land-Based Gambling ). This discussion arose again in 2023 and 2024. The current outgoing cabinet noted in May 2025 that it has no interest in changing these structures any time soon. The cabinet noted that it will currently focus on the remote gam- bling sector. Nevertheless, in February 2024, a land-based gam- bling operator successfully challenged the licensing regimes for the instant lottery, the lotto and land-based sports betting before a district court. The district court concluded that the nature of the three semi-permanent licensing regimes constituted an unjustified restriction of the freedom to provide services. Restrictions of the freedom to provide services can be justified, but one of the criteria is that the national policy in that regard has to be “horizontally consistent” and “proportionate”. According to the district court, this is not the case with the Dutch gambling legislation. The three land-based licensing regimes each constitute a monopoly of their own, whereas the remote gambling licensing regime does not contain a ceiling for the number of licence holders. According to the district court, the diverging approaches between the land-based regimes and the
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