KSA Says Illegal Gambling Still Matches Licensed Revenue as It Targets Google and Meta in the Netherlands

The Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) says the black market has not gone away, even as roughly 90% of users now play through regulated offerings. For high-risk PSPs, the point is straightforward: if enforcement keeps moving from operators to payment flows and ad channels, the pressure shifts to the infrastructure layer.

1. KSA chairman Michel Groothuizen said that illegal gambling remains entrenched in the Dutch market. His line was blunt: “For every euro wagered legally, another euro ends up in the illegal gambling industry.” He added that people using illegal websites spend disproportionately more, to the point where black market revenues can rival the licensed sector.
2. The regulator has already tried the usual route of identifying and shutting down offending operators, but collecting fines and forcing them to stop has been difficult. The new move is more familiar to anyone watching high-risk payments: the KSA is now targeting payment processors that work with illegal operators and pushing to reduce the black market’s online visibility.
3. Groothuizen also singled out Big Tech, accusing companies such as Google and Meta of indirectly helping illegal gambling stay in business. His view is that these platforms make significant profits from ads for illegal operators, both in the Netherlands and globally, and that walking away from that revenue would be hard for them.
4. The KSA says it has enough evidence to pursue legal action, but it is treating that as a last resort. Groothuizen said such cases could take years and may not succeed, which is why the authority prefers to negotiate agreements first and push tech platforms to change their conduct voluntarily.
5. There is at least one concrete step already in motion: the KSA and Google have announced work on a whitelist of all licensed operators in the EU. The idea is to help Google limit the visibility of unregulated platforms. The effort is still early, but it shows where the pressure is heading: not just on operators, but on the rails that help them acquire traffic and move money.

Youth gambling is part of the same picture. Groothuizen warned that early exposure means many people register with gambling platforms as soon as they turn 18, and that black market sites are especially risky because some of them lack basic consumer protections and may even allow underage users.