The Dutch gambling authority KSA has issued its largest fine to date — nearly €25 million — to Novatech, the company behind the unlicensed gambling websites Qbet.com and 55Bet.com, for operating illegally in the Netherlands without a permit.
Why the Fine Is So Large
The KSA found that Dutch gamblers could easily register accounts on both sites, make deposits, and place bets with no technical barriers preventing access from Dutch IP addresses. Neither site offered any form of age verification. Both accepted cryptocurrency payments and other anonymous payment methods, which the regulator identified as creating a direct risk of money laundering.
The size of the penalty reflects the scale of Novatech’s Dutch-facing operations. Dutch law permits the KSA to impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s annual turnover for illegal gambling activity, and the regulator applied that framework in full here. The fine is the highest the KSA has ever imposed on a single operator for this type of breach.
A second company, Fortaprime, was sanctioned at the same time. The KSA fined Fortaprime nearly €1.8 million for running a string of unlicensed gambling websites also targeting Dutch players.
The Scale of the Illegal Market
The Novatech enforcement comes as the KSA continues to grapple with a structural problem in the Dutch market. The regulator estimates that 53% of all money spent on online gambling in the Netherlands flows to illegal sites. The picture is complicated by the player-level data: 94% of Dutch gamblers use licensed operators, which means a small segment of high-volume players is responsible for the majority of illegal site revenue.
That finding is consistent with the channelisation rate falling below 50% in the first half of 2025, a figure that alarmed the regulator at the time. The KSA has since shifted its 2026 enforcement strategy toward targeting the infrastructure that sustains illegal operators — payment providers, hosting companies, and B2B suppliers — rather than relying purely on operator-level fines.
The Dutch regulator has also been active on the licensed side of the market. In February, the KSA issued a public warning against gambling normalisation as surveys showed a shift in social attitudes toward online gambling among younger adults.
Cabinet Measures and Licensing Context
The Dutch cabinet has introduced a series of measures aimed at reducing gambling-related harm since online gambling was legalised in October 2021. These include raising the minimum age for high-risk games such as online slots to 21, imposing per-site deposit limits, and tightening advertising restrictions. More than 100,000 people have registered with the national self-exclusion system to block themselves from licensed operators.
The legalisation was designed to channel players from illegal foreign sites into a regulated, safer environment. A series of reports has since found the outcome was partly the reverse, with gambling addiction cases and problem debt rising after the market opened. Today, 27 companies operating 37 branded labels hold active Dutch licences.
The KSA’s AML enforcement has also targeted licensed operators, including a compliance notice issued to the parent company of ComeOn in late 2025. The Novatech fine makes clear the regulator is equally willing to pursue unlicensed operators at a scale that reflects their actual Dutch-market revenue.
Source: DutchNews.nl
