KSA Chair says the Netherlands needs cross-border cooperation to fight the illegal gambling market

Michel Groothuizen, Chair of the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), says the Netherlands cannot deal with the black market on its own: half of every euro a Dutch person gambles away goes to the illegal market, and the KSA is pushing for European-level action. For licensed operators and PSPs, that is the real message here: enforcement is increasingly about cross-border infrastructure, not just local rules.

1. Groothuizen called illegal gambling “an unprecedentedly large and complex problem” and said the turnover of the global illegal gambling market exceeds the GDP of any country except the US and China. He also pushed back on the idea that offshore operators are just foreign companies with normal business practices occasionally picking up Dutch players.
2. His core point was that the KSA and the Netherlands are “far too small” to make meaningful progress alone. In his view, real impact requires international cooperation and European-level intervention against the infrastructure that supports illegal betting.
3. The comments came as the Netherlands continues to implement reforms to the Remote Gaming Act (KOA) mandated by previous governments. At the start of this month, State Secretary of Justice Claudia van Bruggen faced questions from nine MPs on player protection, regulation, limits on the number of licence holders, the coming advertising ban, and the black market.
4. Groothuizen said he welcomed MPs raising the black market issue, especially suggestions to use a tool to block illegal websites and to consider fake identities to target unlicensed operators. He also said the Netherlands is “holding the major tech companies accountable” as illegal gambling ads continue to appear on mainstream social media platforms.
5. His conclusion was blunt: a well-regulated legal national market and a national regulator are not enough to deal with a global network of criminal organisations. For PSPs and acquiring teams, that is a useful read on where Dutch enforcement thinking is heading: coordination, platform pressure, and more attention on the payment and acquisition layer around unlicensed play.