Dutch lawyer accuses gambling regulator of ducking Meta fight

A Dutch gambling lawyer has accused the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) of sitting on enforcement powers it could use against Meta and other platforms carrying illegal gambling advertising, rather than using them.

Justin Franssen, a partner at Franssen Tolboom Attorneys at Law, made the claim during a panel at the SBC Summit on Wednesday titled "The Dutch Dilemma: Deposit Caps, Ad Bans and the Black-Market Boom", according to iGaming Business.

"To me it's absolutely incomprehensible that we have a regulator that is paid a serious amount of money by the operators and continues to complain that it doesn't have enough enforcement capabilities," he said.

Franssen pointed to a clause in Dutch gambling legislation that initially only banned advertising for prohibited gambling before being broadened to also cover facilitating it. He argued that this amendment squarely applies to platforms like Meta. "To me, what Meta and others are doing is pure facilitation," he said, asking "Why are they not stepping up?"

With the regulator not acting, Franssen said, enforcement has effectively fallen to the industry itself. The Dutch online gambling trade body VNLOK has taken Meta to court, while state operator Nederlandse Loterij has pursued civil cases against unlicensed sites Lalabet, filed in March 2025, and Qbet, filed in April 2026, winning the Lalabet case in June.

Franssen was also dismissive of a motion debated in the Dutch parliament on Tuesday that would give the KSA power to act if Meta fails to remove ads on request, noting that this authority already exists but goes unused.

VNLOK chairman Björn Fuchs criticised a reported comment from the regulator that it preferred dialogue and cooperation with Meta as a more effective long-term approach. "We've seen the last five years; it doesn't add up," he said.

Fuchs told iGaming Business that VNLOK turned to the courts only after direct engagement with Meta produced nothing but automated responses. The association's case, filed at Amsterdam District Court, asks a judge to compel Meta to meet its obligations under the EU Digital Services Act. No hearing date has been set, and Fuchs expects Meta may try to shift proceedings to Dublin, where its EU operations are based.

He pointed to growing legal pressure on Meta elsewhere, including liability findings against the company in civil courts in France and Germany over illegal gambling ads, and noted the company also faces claims in the US concerning addictive design.

A Dutch study published the same week found that all ten leading AI assistants tested, including Meta AI, named at least one unlicensed gambling operator, with three of them presenting unlicensed sites in a way that suggested they were legitimate. Microsoft Copilot was found to have generated a list of supposed legal casinos that in fact included unlicensed brands alongside implications they held KSA licences.

VNLOK has also lodged a complaint with the European Commission and is in contact with unspecified agencies at EU level, Fuchs said, describing licensed offshore operators as sitting on "a small island" while using cloaking techniques and short-lived adverts to target regulated markets in a manner he likened to "a criminal organisation".

Fuchs said bodies such as Interpol should eventually be drawn in, but argued that national regulators first need to coordinate. VNLOK shares intelligence with counterpart trade associations in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK, France and Spain, he said, while regulators themselves remain slower to act collectively. "Meta is a European problem," he said, adding that he expects pressure to build at EU level in the near future.