KSA Advertising Rules in the Netherlands: The Phased Restrictions and What Licence-Holders Must Do Now

The Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) issued formal warnings to every Dutch licence-holder in May 2026 ahead of the FIFA World Cup, making one obligation clear: advertising violations will result in immediate enforcement action. That message was not new, but the context behind it tells a more complex compliance story. The Netherlands has built one of Europe’s most prescriptive remote gambling advertising regimes through a series of legally distinct, phased restrictions, each with separate trigger dates and distinct compliance obligations. Misreading the timeline or assuming one restriction covers another creates genuine enforcement exposure.

The Legal Foundation: KOA and Its Advertising Module

Remote gambling in the Netherlands is governed by the Wet Kansspelen op Afstand (KOA), which entered into force on 1 April 2021 and opened the market to licensed operators on 1 October 2021. Advertising obligations form a named assessment module within the KSA’s licence application framework. The KSA evaluates each applicant’s advertising approach before granting a licence, meaning that advertising compliance is not an operational afterthought but a condition of market access.

The overarching standard under the KOA framework is that gambling advertising must be “prudent and balanced,” and must never be misleading, aggressive, or irresponsible. That baseline applies to all licensed operators across all channels at all times. The specific restrictions layered on top of it have been introduced sequentially since 2022.

Phase One: The Role-Model Ban (2022)

The first major post-launch restriction came into force in 2022 with a prohibition on the use of role models in gambling marketing. Under this rule, licence-holders cannot use footballers, social media influencers, athletes, or other public figures whose image or association would attract younger audiences to gambling products. The rule applies regardless of whether the role model themselves is aged over 24, the question is the composition of the audience their image is likely to reach.

The KSA has applied this rule expansively. According to KSA enforcement records, in June 2026, the regulator issued a formal warning to TOTO Online, the Nederlandse Loterij’s online betting division, after its brand was promoted through the social media channels of eight professional football clubs. The posts offered customers a signed shirt if they placed a €5 bet via TOTO Online. The KSA concluded this constituted promotion through channels where role models are central to the audience relationship, in breach of the 2022 rule. That warning was issued four years after the ban came into force, confirming that the KSA continues to treat the 2022 restriction as actively enforceable rather than as legacy guidance.

“Advertising on social media reaches large numbers of people,” the KSA stated in its May 2026 enforcement communication. “It is often difficult for consumers to determine whether a gambling provider holds a license.”

Phase Two: The Untargeted Advertising Prohibition (July 2023)

From July 2023, the Netherlands banned all untargeted gambling advertising that could reach minors or vulnerable groups. This is the restriction with the broadest channel impact. Television, radio, and other broadcast-format advertising were prohibited outright, because the composition of their audiences cannot be controlled to meet the regulatory standard. Outdoor advertising and print formats that reach general populations are similarly excluded.

Online advertising was not banned in its entirety, but the targeting threshold set by the KSA is demanding: any digital advertising for gambling must be directed at an audience comprising at least 95% of individuals aged 24 or older. This is not a best-efforts standard. If a licensee cannot demonstrate that a platform or campaign reliably meets this threshold, the channel is non-compliant.

The practical consequence for social media advertising has been significant. Licensed operators have substantially reduced activity on Facebook and Instagram, and have effectively ceased advertising on X (formerly Twitter), because the platform’s own demographic targeting tools cannot provide credible assurance of a 95% over-24 audience. Studies suggest that paid online gambling advertisements fell by 42% between the first and second halves of 2025, dropping from approximately 129,000 to 75,000 monthly ads. That contraction reflects compliance adjustment, not an absence of enforcement pressure.

Phase Three: The Sports Sponsorship Ban (July 2025)

Sports sponsorship by licensed gambling operators was fully prohibited from July 2025. Prior to this date, operators retained limited sponsorship rights, subject to conditions. The July 2025 ban closed that channel entirely. Licensed operators can no longer display their brands, logos, or promotional content in association with sporting events, clubs, stadiums, or broadcast partnerships.

The KSA had signalled this direction well in advance. The progression from the 2022 role-model ban through the July 2023 broadcast prohibition and into the July 2025 full sponsorship ban reflects a deliberate regulatory strategy rather than reactive policymaking. Compliance teams that treated each restriction as isolated rather than as part of a coherent trajectory were consistently behind.

What Remains Permitted: The Narrow Online Window

Licensed operators may still conduct online advertising subject to strict conditions. The audience targeting requirement of at least 95% aged 24 or older applies at the campaign level, not merely as a platform-level setting. Operators must be able to demonstrate compliance through audience verification data, and the KSA’s advertising module assessment at licence renewal will scrutinise this documentation.

Bonuses remain broadly permitted under the KOA framework, but cashback bonuses are specifically prohibited. All bonus terms must meet the “prudent and balanced” standard. The distinction between permitted and prohibited bonus structures matters for affiliate channel management, because operators are responsible for the advertising conduct of affiliates promoting their brands.

Restriction	Effective Date	Channel Scope	Current Status
Role-model / influencer ban	2022	All channels, public figures attracting younger audiences	In force, TOTO Online warned June 2026
Untargeted advertising ban	July 2023	TV, radio, outdoor, any digital reaching under-24s	In force, 95% threshold applies
Cashback bonus prohibition	Market opening (Oct 2021)	All channels	In force
Sports sponsorship ban	July 2025	All sports associations and broadcasts	In force
Near-total advertising ban (proposed)	TBC (legislative process ongoing)	All remaining online channels	Under government multi-year agenda

Affiliate and Third-Party Channel Obligations

The advertising restrictions under the KOA bind operators, not only their in-house marketing teams. Licence-holders are responsible for ensuring that affiliates and third parties promoting their brands comply with the same standards. An affiliate posting gambling content through Dutch-facing social media accounts without applying the 95% targeting threshold creates a breach for the operator, not merely for the affiliate.

The KSA’s enforcement against illegal advertising illustrates the scale of the parallel problem. According to KSA enforcement data, in April 2026 alone, the KSA filed over 4,600 reports with Meta concerning illegal gambling advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. The regulator identified approximately 50,000 illegal gambling ads appearing monthly on social media in 2025. Unlicensed operators frequently misappropriated the names and logos of Dutch athletes and established brands to feign credibility. This creates a collateral risk for licensed operators: a consumer encountering illegal advertising that mimics a licensed brand may incorrectly attribute the conduct to the licence-holder.

Compliance teams must maintain documented oversight of all affiliate agreements, conduct periodic audits of affiliate-produced content, and include contractual termination rights for advertising standard breaches. The KSA’s advertising module assessment during licence renewal will examine the controls in place for affiliate management. For a detailed comparison of how affiliate oversight obligations differ across European jurisdictions, the France vs Spain affiliate rules comparison sets out the ANJ and DGOJ frameworks side by side.

Enforcement: Fines, Warnings, and the Maximum Penalty Cap

The KSA’s maximum administrative fine is €1,030,000 or 10% of the operator’s previous year’s global turnover, whichever is higher. For large licensees, the 10% turnover figure is the operative ceiling, and it can substantially exceed €1 million. The KSA imposed its record fine of €19.6 million in December 2023.

In 2025, the KSA fined five licensed operators a combined €8.6 million, predominantly for failures in duty-of-care obligations, following dossier-style investigations into extreme player losses. Four separate fines totalling €31.2 million were imposed on illegal operators during the same period. The regulator has publicly noted a statutory constraint: fines on offshore operators cannot currently exceed 10% of global GGR, which limits proportional deterrence. The KSA is in active discussions with the Ministry of Justice and Security to amend this cap.

Beyond monetary penalties, the KSA can issue cease-and-desist orders with continuing daily financial penalties (dwangsom), administrative enforcement orders, binding instructions, public warnings, and licence suspension or revocation. The duty to comply with advertising rules is assessed as part of every licence renewal, and persistent or serious advertising breaches can affect the reliability assessment that underlies licence status.

What Does the 95% Targeting Threshold Mean Operationally?

The standard requires that the demonstrated composition of the audience receiving a gambling advertisement must reach at least 95% aged 24 or older. Platform-level age-targeting settings are a starting point, but they are not conclusive. The KSA expects licensees to verify actual audience composition data against campaign reporting, and to document that verification.

Where a platform’s demographic tools cannot produce reliable audience composition data broken down by age, the channel does not meet the standard. X (formerly Twitter) has become effectively inaccessible for Dutch gambling advertising precisely because it lacks sufficiently granular age-targeting and audience verification tooling. Licensed operators have ceased meaningful advertising activity on the platform rather than risk breach.

For email and direct marketing to existing registered players, the position is distinct: operators know the ages of their registered account holders and can demonstrate audience composition. Targeting verified customers aged 24 and over through direct channels satisfies the requirement, provided that no component of the communication is designed or likely to reach non-account-holders outside the verified cohort.

The Illegal Market Problem and Its Advertising Dimension

Channelisation in the Netherlands fell from 51% at the end of 2024 to 49% in the first half of 2025, according to the KSA’s 2025 annual report. The unlicensed sector now accounts for the majority of Dutch gambling spend by GGR. Licensed operator GGR was broadly flat year-on-year in the second half of 2025 at approximately €602 million.

The KSA attributes part of this deterioration to advertising restrictions that disproportionately constrain licensed operators while leaving unlicensed offshore operators free to advertise without consequence through social media. The regulator’s enforcement partnership with Meta, Google, and SIDN (the .nl domain registry) targets the distribution infrastructure, but the volume of illegal advertising remains high. This dynamic creates a structural tension in the Dutch regulatory model: restrictions designed to reduce harm to consumers are simultaneously reducing the competitive visibility of licensed operators, with a portion of displaced demand flowing to unlicensed alternatives that offer no player protection at all.

FDJ United, which operates Unibet in the Netherlands, has publicly argued that a total advertising ban would accelerate channelisation losses, driving additional players toward the unregulated market. The KSA Chairman has also cautioned against using advertising restrictions as a blunt instrument for broader social policy. Compliance teams should monitor KSA market data publications and the political development of the multi-year agenda, as the channelisation evidence may influence the final legislative scope of any additional ban.

The Government’s Multi-Year Agenda: What Is Coming

In 2025, State Secretary for Justice and Security Claudia van Bruggen published a multi-year agenda for reducing gambling harm. The 16-page agenda sets out a near-total ban on online gambling advertising as a priority measure. It also proposes eliminating free bets and equivalent bonus structures, reducing the number of online licences to provide “extra protection,” and enhancing the CRUKS national self-exclusion register to make exclusion more accessible and allow indefinite registration.

The three-party coalition government had signalled its direction in its February coalition agreement, explicitly comparing gambling to sex work as a policy framing. The Dutch parliament discussed a full advertising ban in January 2026, but as of mid-2026 no new legislative measures had been enacted beyond the existing framework. The multi-year agenda remains the operative policy document, and compliance teams should treat it as the advance signal of where the regulatory floor will be set. Operators who begin reviewing their business models for a world without online advertising now will be better positioned than those who wait for primary legislation.

“I have drawn up the multi-year agenda for protection against gambling damage to protect people. Preventing gambling damage requires a broad approach involving a long-term commitment to more preventive measures,” State Secretary van Bruggen wrote in the agenda letter.

Interaction with Duty-of-Care Obligations

Advertising compliance and the KSA’s duty-of-care framework are legally distinct but operationally connected. Since October 2024, operators must conduct a statutory means test (draagkrachttoets) whenever a player applies to exceed the mandatory monthly deposit limits of €300 net for players aged 18 to 24 and €700 for players aged 24 and over. In July 2026, the KSA issued updated guidance clarifying that the means test must be based exclusively on structural, recurring income. Liquid assets, savings, home equity, and one-off bonuses are explicitly excluded from the calculation.

The connection to advertising is practical: operators whose marketing successfully acquires higher-value players must then apply more intensive duty-of-care scrutiny to those players. The KSA’s investigation into 711 B.V., which resulted in an €886,000 fine announced in June 2026, found that the operator failed to analyse player gambling behaviour adequately and did not implement suitable intervention measures. The probe covered the period from February 2022 to June 2024. A player acquired through compliant advertising who then suffers extreme losses without adequate operator intervention creates dual regulatory exposure across both the advertising and duty-of-care frameworks.

Operators holding or seeking Dutch licences should also note that the CRUKS self-exclusion register integration is a technical requirement assessed under the KSA Gaming System Assessment Scheme v2.1 (October 2024). The scheme is the binding technical standard for gaming system certification, and its requirements extend to addiction prevention functionality, registration procedures, and information security. For a broader view of how self-exclusion and player protection obligations compare across regulated markets, the Responsible Gambling Compliance hub on this site covers national register models including CRUKS alongside GAMSTOP, ROFUS, and Spelpaus.

Practical Compliance Actions for Licence-Holders

The phased nature of the Dutch advertising regime means that compliance teams must maintain a live map of which restrictions are in force, not a static checklist built at market entry. The restrictions introduced in 2022, 2023, and July 2025 each carry separate documentation and control obligations.

Campaign-level audience verification records must be retained for all online advertising. Where a platform cannot produce age-composition data meeting the 95% threshold, the channel must be suspended. Affiliate agreements must include explicit advertising standards clauses, with audit rights and termination provisions tied to KSA rule compliance. Affiliate-produced content must be reviewed on a periodic basis, with review logs maintained for potential regulatory inspection.

Bonus structures must be reviewed against the prohibition on cashback bonuses and the general requirement that all bonus advertising meets the “prudent and balanced” standard. This includes bonus advertising placed by or through affiliates.

The KSA’s pre-2026 World Cup circular to licence-holders stated that any rule violations during the tournament period would be met with immediate enforcement action. Compliance teams planning campaign activity around major sporting events should seek internal pre-clearance and, where there is any ambiguity about compliance with a specific format or channel, consult qualified Dutch legal counsel before deployment. Legal advice specific to the application of KOA advertising rules is particularly important given that enforcement guidance has evolved through administrative decisions rather than through published bright-line rules in all cases.

Key Resources

The primary sources for KSA advertising compliance obligations are the Kansspelautoriteit’s official regulatory framework documentation, the KOA legislative text, and the KSA’s own published guidance and enforcement communications. All KSA primary documents are published in Dutch, with English courtesy translations available for the Gaming System Assessment Scheme. The scheme (v2.1, October 2024) is available at kansspelautoriteit.nl and should be read alongside the advertising module requirements in the licence application framework. The KSA 2025 annual report, published in April 2026, provides the authoritative account of enforcement volume, channelisation data, and the regulator’s legislative priorities for the period ahead.