The Dutch Gaming Authority, the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has penalised an unnamed company for organising prize draws without a licence.
Prize draws are a common product across various markets, though they have caused tensions with lottery operators in some jurisdictions – the UK being a notable example.
In the Netherlands, the KSA has penalised the unnamed firm for offering prices to promote its products without meeting the “various conditions” that “apply to such promotions”.
“For instance, a company, service, or product may only be promoted in this way once a year, participation must be free, and the company must publish the terms and conditions of participation on its website,” the KSA explained.
The KSA states that it cautioned the company about its prize draws during a meeting with its owner. However, the company continued to organise draws after today, leading to the decision to enforce a penalty.
The company will have to pay €150,000 (£129,818) per violation, with a maximum penalty of €450,000.
This is the latest in a series of enforcement actions the Dutch regulator has dished out in recent months, with the regulator wrestling to assert its authority over the betting, gaming and lotteries markets in the country.
The prize draw penalty is a rather minor amount in the grand scheme of things.
The KSA has today penalised global predictions platform Polymarket with a fee of €450,000 per week, while a Costa Rica-based firm was recently fined over €3m for allowing Dutch players to access its platform without a licence.
Its enforcement actions have also extended to the national lottery operator, the Nederlandse Loterij. The lottery’s online sportsbook division, TOTO Online, was cautioned last week for breaching sports betting marketing rules.
The regulator clearly sees this rule breach as a less serious one than TOTO’s misconduct in previous years, as that lottery was fined €400,000 back in 2022 for advertising to customers aged between 18-23.