Netherlands KSA chief says the country is too small to beat the gray market alone

The head of the Dutch regulator, KSA, says national measures are not enough to fight illegal gambling on their own. He put the annual tax loss from the gray sector at up to €500 million, and argued that the problem now needs European coordination.

1. The KSA chief said large tech companies should take responsibility and stop providing their online platforms and search engines to what he called large-scale criminal activity tied to illegal gambling.
2. His core point was blunt: the Netherlands is too small to win this fight alone. In his view, the country will inevitably need help from Europe if it wants to pressure tech companies into cooperating against illegal gambling operators.
3. He also called for an international law enforcement organization to deal with gray-market operators, whose activity is increasingly cross-border. For PSPs, that is the part to watch: once enforcement starts moving across borders, local compliance fixes stop being enough on their own.
4. The official said the gray sector is already costing the Netherlands up to €500 million a year in lost tax revenue, which is the kind of number regulators tend to use when they want the market, not just the police, to take the problem seriously.