Starting this spring, the Dutch Gambling Authority (KSA) will review applications to assess whether “illegal games of chance have been offered.”

Established in 2019, the cooling-off period was a precursory provision allowing unlicensed operators to apply for an iGaming licence as long as they did not actively target Dutch consumers.

When this policy was introduced, it was intended to aid the market’s long-term channelisation efforts by making it harder for passive operators to acquire new consumers and ensure existing ones would end up playing with operators that would eventually be licensed.

The review period was implemented in response to the Postema motion, which read: “the government is requested to ensure that licences for the provision of remote games of chance are only granted to parties that have not, while unlicensed, actively and specifically aimed at the Dutch market for a continuous period of at least two years.”

However, this only applied to “active” targeting, while passive offers, such as games not offered on a .nl website, in the Dutch language, would not provide the regulator grounds to deny a remote licence to an applicant.

But the Netherlands’ Minister for Legal Protection, Sander Dekker, issued a new directive in September 2021, deeming passive gambling offers no longer acceptable and instructing the KSA to terminate the cooling-off period.

Consequently, this will come to an end on 1 April, and from then on, the KSA said it “will give more weight to illegal online games of chance and in any case all illegal online games of chance up to eight years ago will be taken into account.”