The Stars Group has been particularly diligent in its efforts to show gambling regulators around the world that it has been steering away from markets with fuzzy regulations. The reason – it wants to clean up its tarnished past that includes its banishment from the US market in the aftermath of UIGEA’s passage.
However, the company might have made occasional missteps along the way and its presence in the Dutch market turned out to be one such misstep.
The Dutch gambling regulator, Kansspelautoriteit, said on Monday that it has fined TSG Interactive Gaming Europe Limited, a subsidiary of The Stars Group, for providing online poker services to Dutch customers on the pokerstars.eu website. The company was slapped a €400,000 fine by the Dutch gambling watchdog, it also became known.
Kansspelautoriteit conducted an investigation into the operations of PokerStars’ European website in the second half of 2018. The regulator discovered that the poker website accepted players from the Netherlands, even though it was not authorized to do so.
The regulator detected a number of other issues related to the online poker operation, including the fact that it was possible for Dutch customers to move funds via locally popular online payment method iDEAL.
The site was found to have featured a contact form in Dutch language and mentioned two Dutch organizations that assist people with problem gambling behavior. The PokerStars’ .eu website did not list the Netherlands as a restricted territory, Kansspelautoriteit said Monday in a statement announcing the latest of a number of fines imposed on operators servicing the Dutch market without holding a license from the regulator.
A Number of Issues Were Adjusted
Kansspelautoriteit said Monday that a number of the issues spotted during its original investigation were found to have been adjusted upon a second check. News that The Stars Group and its flagship online poker product have appeared on the Dutch regulator’s radar screen first emerged in September 2018.
As reported by Casino News Daily, PokerStars informed back then its Dutch customers that the iDEAL payment method would no longer be available.
Kansspelautoriteit’s latest regulatory action comes as part of the agency’s effort to tackle unregulated gambling. Under the Netherlands’ current gambling law, international operators are not permitted to conduct gambling activity on the territory of the country without licenses from Kansspelautoriteit. However, under this same law, it is impossible for the regulator to issue licenses to interested international operators.
That is expected to change in early 2021 when the new Dutch gambling law is slated to take effect. The law, which was approved by the Dutch Senate earlier this year, aims to reorganize the local market and open it to international gaming and betting companies.
However, the new regime contains provisions that aim to penalize operators that had targeted Dutch customers, even though they had not been authorized to conduct gambling activities in the Netherlands. These provisions stipulate that online gambling licenses will only be issued to companies that have not actively serviced Dutch customers for a period of at least two years.
Dutch lawmakers and regulators are yet to provide more specific details on when that two-year period commences and what ‘actively’ applies to.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on the day’s top casino news stories
