Key Points
- The KSA renewed Lotto BV’s lottery, scratch card and land-based sports betting licences through 2031, justified by the operator’s state-owned status, without competitive tender.
- A live court challenge at the Council of State’s Administrative Jurisdiction Division could revoke those licences, strip their exclusivity, or leave them intact.
- Any revocation would come no earlier than one year after the ruling, giving the market a defined window before a formal tender process begins.
The Dutch Gambling Authority (KSA) extended the monopoly licenses to Lotto BV, the state-owned gambling company, on 11 September 2026, in the knowledge that a decision by the court could have an immense impact on the value of these very licenses before their expiration. The authority had no time to waste. These licenses, which include lotto games, scratch games and sports betting in land-based venues, were expiring on 31 December 2026 and, in addition, there was an ongoing decision from the court regarding these licenses.
The KSA stated it would have preferred to await the Council of State’s decision before granting new monopoly licences. With the deadline closing in, that wait became untenable. As the KSA explained in its official announcement, “an uninterrupted legal supply of lottery games, instant lotteries, and land-based sports betting” must be guaranteed after 31 December 2026, and Lotto BV itself needed timely clarity on whether its offering could continue at all.
The licences now run to 2031. What they are worth depends entirely on what the Council of State decides next.
New Conditions That Redefine the Relationship
The KSA did not simply carry over the existing terms. All three renewed licences carry new conditions aimed at protecting players and preventing participation by minors. Lotto BV must also notify the regulator in advance of any material change to its ownership or corporate structure, a condition with more teeth than it might first appear.
The licences were granted without competitive tender, justified by the state’s ownership stake in Lotto BV, which is a subsidiary of Nederlandse Loterij, the state-owned group that holds the equivalent position for the national lottery and land-based sports betting that Holland Casino holds for casino gaming. Should Nederlandse Loterij be privatised during the licence period, the KSA has stated it will assess whether the change affects the licence and whether it can continue or must be withdrawn.
That notification obligation, in other words, is the regulator’s early-warning system against the very scenario that would undermine the legal basis for granting these licences privately in the first place.
The Court Case That Changes the Stakes
The appeal at the Council of State is not just another appeal in law. This appeal was prompted by the decision made by the District Court of East Brabant in February 2024 that KSA had no right to deny the requests for licenses from JVH Gaming, the owner of Jack’s Casino and Jacks.nl, simply because there was a monopoly of Nederlandse Loterij. The court argued that the gambling legislation in Holland became “no longer horizontally consistent” due to the introduction of the Remote Gambling Act in 2021, where an online market was opened up to competition, but land-based lottery, scratch cards and sports betting remained in the single-holder regime.
The KSA has been explicit about the three possible outcomes when it comes to this. If the Council of State finds the monopoly system must be opened, Lotto BV’s licences can stay in force but other operators would be able to apply for the same permits. If the council finds that private awarding without tender is no longer permissible, the licences could be revoked outright. The KSA has confirmed any such revocation would not take effect earlier than one year after the ruling, since it would need that window to organise a transparent competitive tender. Operators, investors and suppliers with Dutch market exposure should treat that ruling date, whenever it arrives, as the start of the clock.
Ten Years of EU Pressure Behind the Question
The court case on the domestic level is not a stand-alone event. This issue is embedded in a bigger controversy that dates back to 2014 when monopoly licenses were issued to existing betting and lottery organisations without proper tenders in the Netherlands. In 2016, the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) initiated a complaint before the European Commission, as it saw this as an illegal state aid case.
The Commission terminated the complaint in 2020 without launching any investigation. EGBA took its appeal and in November 2023, the EU General Court overturned the decision of the Commission due to the total absence of a proper investigation in the pre-investigation stage.
According to EGBA Secretary General Maarten Haijer, “The Commission is expected to launch a state aid investigation to see if there was any unlawful state aid in extending monopoly licenses in the Netherlands in 2014.” It is not known yet whether such an investigation has been launched and will apply to the 2026 extension.
The Illegal Market Problem Running Alongside All of This
A detail largely absent from competitor coverage of this renewal is what Nederlandse Loterij, Lotto BV’s parent, has been doing simultaneously. In September 2026 alone, the lottery operator moved against Skyhills, its third unlicensed operator targeted through legal proceedings, following earlier cases against Lalabet and Qbet. A Dutch court ruled largely in the lottery’s favour against Lalabet in June 2026, finding the platform’s operators and directors had acted unlawfully by targeting Dutch players and ordering disclosure of ownership and shareholding details.
The KSA’s own enforcement record shows it imposed a record fine of €24,846,000 on Novatech Solutions, the company behind Qbet.com and 55Bet.com, for operating without a Dutch licence. Nederlandse Loterij subsequently pursued liability against the operators, trust offices, shell companies and directors behind the business, seeking to prevent illegal operators from simply cycling through new corporate names to escape enforcement.
Nederlandse Loterij CEO Arjan Blok has said, based on the company’s own assessment, that illegal gambling businesses account for half the Dutch gambling market and around 95% of gambling advertisements reaching Dutch consumers. Those are the operator’s figures, not independently verified market data, but they frame the scale of enforcement pressure the state-owned monopoly holder is operating under at the very moment its licensed status is in question.
Expert Analysis
Here is what we find striking about the KSA’s position, and what coverage of this story has largely avoided saying out loud. The regulator renewed these licences without competitive tender, justifying that decision on the same legal basis, state ownership and horizontal consistency, that a domestic court already found insufficient in February 2024. The Council of State suspended that ruling to consider it further. But the underlying logic, that a single-holder monopoly for land-based lottery products can be sustained while the online market operates under open competition, has already been challenged at court level and has not yet been vindicated on appeal.
Granting five more years on that contested basis is not obviously wrong, given the genuine continuity concern the KSA cited. Continuity of lawful gambling supply is a legitimate regulatory priority. But we think it is worth asking whether regulators across Europe should be watching closely. The Netherlands built what is often described as a tightly controlled post-2021 market online, while leaving three land-based product categories inside a framework inherited from 1964. The Council of State’s ruling will not settle whether that is defensible in the long run, but it will mark the moment the Netherlands can no longer say the question is merely pending. The one-year revocation buffer is meaningful. What happens inside that year will define whether the Dutch lottery market opens, restructures, or holds exactly where it is.
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