Netherlands Gambling Authority announces crackdown on illegal affiliates
The Netherlands Gambling Authority announced that it has concluded two investigations into operators and affiliate websites promoting illegal online gambling offers to self-excluded players or other vulnerable consumers.
The Dutch regulator has launched a follow-up investigation to discover the identities of the responsible website owners.
In related news, the Dutch regulator has presented its supervisory agenda for 2024, citing four areas of focus:
Duty of care and addiction prevention
Combating illegal online gambling
Combating illegal offline gambling
Timely and compliant data sharing by licensed operators.
New study says Germany gambling addiction at “epidemic” proportions
The number of people addicted to gambling in Germany has more than tripled from 400,000 to 1.3 million in the space of just five years, according to a controversial new study by the country's federal ministry of health.
The cause of the dramatic increase is not explained, nor has the underlying data been published. As a result of this lack of transparency, the study's findings have been questioned by experts, as well as representatives of Germany's largest opposition party, CDU.
The sharp increase in reported problem gamblers coincides with the Hamburg Institute for Interdisciplinary Addiction and Drug Research (ISD) and the University of Bremen jointly becoming responsible for supplying problem gambling data instead of the Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA), which is now about to be dissolved at the request of Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).
Upcoming events
The following event(s) may be of interest to the GiH community.
Kindred's annual Sustainable Gambling Conference will be held March 20, 2024, at the Kia Oval in London.
The 2024 Casino Operations Summit, which focuses on land-based casino operations, will take place April 23-25 in Amsterdam.
The 14th European Conference on Gambling Studies and Policy Issues, organized by the European Association for the Study of Gambling (EASG), will be held September 10-13, 2024, in Rome, Italy.
Ministry of Justice outlines conditions for gambling public awareness campaign
Ahead of next week's parliamentary debate on online gambling, Minister for Legal Protection, Franc Weerwind shared several documents with the Lower House.
These include a gambling addiction prevention agenda, a qualitative study on how to effectively communicate the risks associated with gambling to young adults, and a quantitative study on gambling behavior among gamblers aged 18-23.
The main takeaways of the Minister's letter and the aforementioned documents are the following:
Major regulatory changes (e.g., stricter advertising rules, additional game restrictions) will not be proposed until after the planned evaluation of the Remote Gaming Act will be concluded in October 2024.
A suitable framework to effectively communicate with young adults on the risks of gambling is currently lacking. Notably, neither operators, addiction prevention organizations, or even the government are perceived by the study's respondents as sufficiently trustworthy (or relevant) to be suitable messengers.
Among gamblers aged 18-23, the vast majority (78%) are classified as non-problematic or low-risk gamblers. However, 14% are deemed to be high-risk gamblers.
Other news
CasinoNieuws has published a wide-ranging interview with Peter Geertsen who, for 34 years, worked for the Netherlands Gambling Authority and its predecessors.
Arie Dijkstra, Professor in Psychology and Health at the University of Groningen, and Daan Deenik, Program Development Manager at SolutionS Addicition Care, have joined Holland Casino's prevention advisory group.
Denmark's gambling regulator, Spillemyndigheden has secured a court order allowing the regulator to block another 83 websites in the country.
The Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder (GGL), the German Gambling Authority, has called for a reconsideration of a planned reform which would see its power to file criminal charges removed.