The Netherlands Gambling Authority, known as the KSA, has fined online gambling operator 711 a total of €886,000 for failing to meet its duty of care obligations.
The fine followed a KSA investigation into 10 separate player files, which uncovered that 711 had not done enough to protect users from gambling-related harm.
All 10 files revealed breaches of the Netherlands’ Gambling Act, with the violations said to have occurred between 2022 and 26 June 2024.
This marks the first publicly announced financial penalty from the KSA since 10 March, when Fortaprime SRL was fined €1.8m and Novatech received a record €24.8m sanction.
KSA Chairman Michel Groothuizen suggested the action against 711 may form part of a broader regulatory enforcement push currently underway.
Groothuizen stated: “We have observed that not all providers implemented their duty of care equally well from the opening of the market. We have therefore conducted additional investigations, which are now resulting in various duty of care fines.”
The 10 players selected for review were those who had suffered the greatest losses during the period between October 2023 and March 2024.
The KSA’s sanction report concluded that 711 failed to take sufficient measures to prevent excessive gambling and addiction across every one of the 10 cases examined.
Beyond failing to identify warning signals of potential gambling harm, 711 was also found to have acted contrary to its own internal policy, which required the responsible gambling team to request a risk analysis whenever a player lost €2,500.
In cases where risk analyses were required under that policy, the KSA found they were carried out too late to be considered adequate or effective.
A notable feature of the KSA’s enforcement methodology in this case was its consistent use of median salary comparisons as a benchmark for assessing operator conduct.
When players sustained heavy losses over short periods, the regulator framed those figures in terms of multiples of the median monthly or yearly salary to illustrate the scale of harm.
The KSA highlighted one particularly stark example, noting: “It is also important in this regard that the player lost an amount exceeding 10 median monthly salaries in four days and had a daily deposit limit of more than seven median monthly salaries, while 711 had no insight whatsoever into the player’s financial position.”
The case also prompted the KSA to strengthen its own standards, with Groothuizen adding: “We have further tightened the requirements regarding the duty of care to prevent excesses such as those we are seeing here in the future.”
The enforcement action against 711 signals that Dutch regulators are continuing to take an increasingly assertive approach to holding licensed operators accountable for player protection failings.
