Barnstormer Bucks

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Vicki Scott, the DIA’s director of gambling, said the investigation had delivered significant results, while stressing that work to improve compliance and ensure communities received their share of gambling proceeds would continue.

“Most operators have worked constructively with us to address historical issues and improve their practices,” Scott said.

“While we’ve made substantial progress, our work is not finished. We’ll continue working with operators to recover funding for communities, improve compliance and maintain public confidence in the integrity of class 4 gambling.”

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Van Bruggen said the matter would be raised in subsequent progress reports.

Beyond raising the age limit to 21, Van Dijk called for a complete reversal of the Netherlands’ 2021 online gambling legalisation, which helped establish a reasonably mature legal gambling market for the sector, until tighter restrictions for players, and increased taxes, struck licensed operators in recent years.

Van Dijk also voiced his opinion that all gambling advertising should be banned, including for lotteries and land-based casinos.

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Using data collected primarily through Chrome’s incognito mode to exclude personalised search histories, the KVA identified several autocomplete and pre-fill search queries that directly suggested illegal gambling platforms to users.

Examples included phrases like “online casino zonder Cruks” (online casino without CRUKS, the Dutch self-exclusion registry for problem gamblers) and “beste online casino buitenland” (best online casino abroad).

KVA expressed concern over the potential manipulation of Google’s autocomplete function by unauthorised operators and websites primarily set up to redirect Dutch consumers to illegal gambling offers.