KSA fines EOD Code SRL record €37m for unlicensed Dutch betting
The Netherlands Gambling Authority has issued its largest-ever penalty against a Romanian operator running more than a dozen gambling sites accessible to Dutch players without a licence.
The Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) has fined EOD Code SRL €37 million, its biggest sanction to date, after finding the company ran unlicensed online gambling services reachable by players in the Netherlands, iGaming Business reported.
The regulator's investigation, concluded on Thursday, identified more than ten sites operated by the company, including Instantcasino, Skyhills, Slotmonster, Betiro, Betblast, Fastslots, Goldenpanda, Sambaslots, Winningz, Incognitocasino, Foxygold and Luckypays.
KSA inspectors said bets could be placed from within the Netherlands on several of these platforms, despite EOD Code SRL holding no Dutch licence. Licensed operators are required to block Dutch residents from unlicensed gambling services, and the regulator found this obligation had not been met.
The watchdog also pointed to weak or unclear age verification across many of the sites, which it said undermined efforts to stop underage gambling. The issue remains politically sensitive in the Netherlands: earlier this year, Christian Democratic Party politician Meryam Sümer called for the minimum legal gambling age to rise from 18 to 24, citing a debt crisis in Enschede where, she said, one in five young people are in debt. Sümer linked the problem to gambling advertising, saying "the key is to reduce temptations."
EOD Code SRL also accepted cryptocurrencies and other anonymous payment methods, which the KSA said raises the risk of money laundering and makes it harder to enforce consumer protection rules.
Dutch gambling law allows the KSA to choose between a fixed administrative fine and a revenue-based penalty when an operator's illegal turnover justifies a larger sanction. The regulator judged that EOD Code SRL had generated substantial income from Dutch customers and applied a fine proportional to that revenue, arriving at the €37 million figure.
The case lands as the KSA continues to grapple with the wider problem of unlicensed operators reaching Dutch consumers through newer channels. A Dutch study published earlier this month found that all ten generative AI chat and search tools tested, including ChatGPT, Claude and Meta AI, named at least one unlicensed operator by name or domain during at least one conversation.
Eight of the tools surfaced unlicensed operator names in response to neutral or leading questions that carried no explicit research intent, according to the study. Four tools, Mistral Le Chat, Google AI Mode, DeepSeek and Grok, produced unlicensed site names after a single question.
The findings suggest that AI assistants have become an additional route by which Dutch consumers encounter gambling services operating outside the country's licensing regime, adding a further enforcement challenge for the KSA beyond conventional website operators such as EOD Code SRL.