The fine of €900,000 ($976,424/£756,027) was issued on 20 February by the KSA, which said the operator had not taken measures to stop Dutch players from gambling on its platform.
The CasinoSky site offers games of chance but holds no licence in the Netherlands. It had already been hit with a fine of €280,000 in March 2024 when KSA investigators found that players with IP addresses in the Netherlands could still access the site.
Furthermore, when investigating the website, it was found that players could still make deposits with credit cards linked to Dutch banks and that the area code when registering was automatically filled with the Dutch +31.
The Netherlands had also not been marked as an excluded country in the website’s terms of service.
KSA chairperson Michel Groothuizen said in a released statement that the Netherlands has a legal market where this type of gambling should take place in a safe manner.
“With these types of illegal providers, we often see that no account is taken of the prevention of risky gaming behaviour,” Groothuizen said.
“For example, there was no age verification, which also allows minors to play, and the possibility was offered to gamble with cryptocurrency. At KSA, we take tough action against these types of parties.”
The Costa Rica-headquartered Sarah Eternal SRL has six weeks from the issuing of the fine to pay the €900,000 or appeal the decision.
Calls for increased action
There was a review last year of the Netherlands’ 2021 Remote Gambling Act. It suggested that measures currently in place to protect players were insufficient and were failing.
Last month, KSA chairperson Groothuizen warned against raising the online gambling age to 21, noting such a move could force younger players to the black market where there is little protection.
Groothuizen made the statement in response to a letter from the country’s state secretary for legal protection, Teun Struycken, that called for increased enforcement measures, such as a rise on the legal betting age and tougher powers for regulators.
Struycken also proposed that there should be industry-wide deposit limits. While Groothuizen welcomed the move, he raised the challenges that would come with enforcing such a measure.
Past October, player net deposit limits were enforced in the Netherlands but have been rolled out independently across licensed operators. So, if a player reaches their limit on one site, they have the ability to change to another and their limit still remains in full.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/gaming/gaming-regulation/sarah-eternal-srl-fined-e900000-by-dutch-regulator/
