The Dutch gambling authority (Kansspelautoriteit) has granted new five-year online licenses to five of the eight operators that opened the regulated market in 2021, with the current permits expiring Sept. 30. Betcity, bet365, and GGPoker have not announced renewals, and bet365 holds the broadest license of the eight. The cabinet is separately studying a cap on the number of online licenses.
Dutch Gambling Operators Race for Licenses as Deadline Nears
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Key Takeaways
- The KSA cleared TOTO, Kansino, Fair Play, Holland Casino, and Bingoal through 2031.
- Betcity, bet365, and GGPoker have not announced renewals before the Sept. 30 expiry.
- The KSA says 53% of Dutch online gambling spend goes to unlicensed platforms.
Five Cleared, and Three Still Waiting on the KSA
Dutch remote gambling licenses are unrenewable under the current regime. As such, each operator had to file a fresh application, subject to reassessment of its addiction-prevention and advertising policies, and, since Jan. 1 of this year, submission of an exit plan setting out how it would wind down its Dutch offering – a non-insignificant element of the bargain, as Polymarket learned the hard way. The KSA is collecting €420,000, roughly $487,000, from the prediction-market operator for stopping Dutch service one day after its deadline, a penalty the company is contesting on the grounds that geofencing an entire country takes longer than the regulator allowed.
Fair Play Online announced first, on Aug. 4, when responsible gambling manager Peter Vreuls said on LinkedIn that FPO Nederland B.V. had been granted a new permit effective Oct. 1. Kansino on Aug. 5, followed by Holland Casino Online and Bingoal on Aug. 6. All five commence Oct. 1, 2026, the day after the existing permits expire on Sept. 30. The five are not equivalent: Fair Play and Kansino hold casino-only licenses, TOTO Online and Holland Casino add sports betting, and Bingoal alone among them covers all four remote categories.
Betcity, bet365, and GGPoker have not announced renewals yet. Little can be read into that from the regulator’s side, because the public license register still records the original 2021 to 2026 term for all eight opening licensees as if writing, including the five that have announced. The register does show scope. Hillside (New Media Malta) PLC, the licensee behind bet365, holds all four remote categories under license 1690, the broadest license among the openers alongside Bingoal’s. NSUS Malta Limited, which operates GGPoker, holds no sports betting license at all – only poker and casino games.
On Aug. 6, the same day it cleared Holland Casino and Bingoal, the KSA publicly addressed Betcity and TOTO Winkel for breaching the ban on role models in gambling advertising, in violations detected during the intensified supervision it ran around the World Cup. Betcity had displayed betting options beside national team shirts carrying the names and squad numbers of Kylian Mbappé and Michael Olise; the players were not pictured, but the regulator found the combination of name, number, and national shirt created a clear association with them. TOTO Winkel, Nederlandse Loterij’s retail arm, ran a supermarket advertisement reading “Mbappé hattrick? Win €100, speel hier mee” alongside a blue shirt bearing Mbappé’s number. Both removed the material immediately, and TOTO Winkel withdrew similar planned advertising. The KSA issued no sanction.
Gambling duty rose from 30.5% of gross gaming revenue to 34.2% in January 2025, then to 37.8% in January 2026. A role-model ban has applied since 2022 and a prohibition on untargeted advertising since 2023, and on June 12 the cabinet proposed going further still: a near-total ban on online gambling advertising, an end to bonuses such as sign-up free bets, and an overarching deposit limit with an affordability test to raise it. Bitcoin.com News reported that the package risks pushing players offshore.
The KSA puts 53% of all money wagered online in the Netherlands with unlicensed platforms, even though 94% of players use licensed operators. In April, Nederlandse Loterij sued the operators of Qbet, the largest unlicensed Dutch site, at The Hague, after the KSA’s record €24.8 million fine against it was called too low by the regulator’s own chair, Michel Groothuizen, who estimated the penalty would have exceeded €100 million had Dutch law not capped fines at 10% of global turnover.
Two of the original ten are already gone. Flutter’s Tombola wound down first, and LiveScore Malta Limited stopped serving Dutch players on Nov. 29, 2024, with the KSA revoking both licenses on Dec. 23. LiveScore Group chief executive Sam Sadi said the planned tax increase meant the market was “no longer viable commercially.”
Two further deadlines fall this year. JOI Gaming Limited, the Maltese licensee behind Jacks.nl, holds license 1959 to Nov. 20, while sister brand 711, licensed through 711 B.V., has until March 16, 2027. All of them are reapplying in a market where the cabinet is studying a cap on the number of online licenses it issues at all.
