Ten gambling companies can legally offer online games of chance from Friday. The Gaming Authority will announce next week which companies will receive a license. Until now, online gambling has been forbidden.
The new gambling law will come into effect next Friday. The goal is that in three years 80 percent of players will gamble at a company with a license. The ten providers that are now getting a license meet the high requirements that have been set, says René Jansen, chairman of the board of directors of the Gaming Authority. news hour.
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“The game must be safe. Much must be done to prevent addiction. There must be anti-money laundering provisions. Suspicious gambling patterns must be detected. Providers must be able to monitor people’s gaming behavior and tackle it again. That takes a lot from companies that have applied for a license.”
In total, 29 largely Dutch companies have applied for a permit. The companies that have been dropped do not currently meet the requirements of the law. Large international gambling companies are currently on a penalty bank, because they have let Dutch players gamble on their sites for years through a trick.
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At the moment, more than 800,000 Dutch people play on illegal sites. They spend an estimated 500 million euros per year. Jansen: “Many do not even know that it is illegal. There is no supervision at the moment. We cannot really intervene how they do that game. For the first time, we now have instruments with which we can really intervene.”
A study by Motivaction commissioned by the VNLOK shows that a quarter of all players have experienced (financial) problems due to online gambling in the past year. In addition, it also appears that 54 percent of Dutch gamblers feel that they are tempted to continue playing by online casinos.
According to Jansen, the gambling law provides an important answer. “We will see whether it will be conclusive. You are not allowed to offer bonuses during the game. That there is also suspicious playing behavior that the provider must intervene, which we can then monitor again. There are more checks en balances then leave it in completely illegal.”
Curaçao
There is a fear that some of the gamblers will soon go to illegal casinos that operate from Curaçao. A number of illegal websites are facilitated on Curaçao. The Gaming Authority has no direct supervision on the island. “What we can do is make life difficult for the providers. We will also increase international cooperation. We will also impose high fines, in which I immediately put the perspective: often they do not even pay.”
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