Casino Zoetermeer fined €21,500 for admitting Cruks self-excluded players in the Netherlands

The Dutch regulator has now made public a fine against Casino Zoetermeer for letting two players through despite their listing on Cruks, the Netherlands’ self-exclusion register. For land-based operators, this is the pointy end of the same compliance problem online casinos face: if the register check fails, the regulator treats it as a controls failure, not a clerical hiccup.

1. Casino Zoetermeer operates three land-based casinos in Zoetermeer, South Holland, near The Hague. The fine was imposed after a 2022 investigation, but the operator initially filed a legal request to stop the sanction from being published.
2. That publication ban was first rejected, and Casino Zoetermeer then appealed. A judge has now ruled there were no grounds for that appeal, which cleared the way for Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), the Dutch gambling regulator, to disclose the enforcement action.
3. The KSA said the original fine was €25,000, later reduced ex officio to €21,500 because of the time that passed during the proceedings.
4. Cruks was launched in October 2021 alongside the opening of the regulated online gambling market in the Netherlands, and later expanded to land-based gambling. The KSA says there are currently approximately 118,000 people listed on the system.
5. According to the regulator, it received two reports in 2022 saying Casino Zoetermeer was not checking players properly against Cruks. Its investigation into access controls found that the casino had admitted two players who were on the register at the time.

The compliance message is not subtle: providers of online and high-risk physical gambling in the Netherlands are required to check Cruks before granting access, and the KSA says it closely monitors that obligation. In the same public statement cycle, the regulator also took issue with TonyBet over footballers’ likenesses in World Cup gambling ads, saying the ban on role models covers recognisable references to professional footballers even when the athletes do not appear in the ads.