Key Points
- VNLOK documented Meta removing under 5% of flagged illegal gambling ads throughout Q4 2025, with that figure rising to only 15% by June 2026.
- A May 2026 analysis by KVA and VNLOK estimated Meta may earn between €7.3m and €13.6m per year from illegal gambling ads targeting Dutch users, modelled from publicly available data.
- The Bikkers motion giving the Kansspelautoriteit powers to fine platforms over illegal gambling ads passed with a majority in the Dutch House of Representatives on September 29.
Dutch gambling trade body VNLOK formally summoned Meta to an Amsterdam court on September 28. The association asks a judge to find that Facebook and Instagram are not meeting EU Digital Services Act obligations. VNLOK also wants concrete, structural measures ordered against illegal gambling ads reaching Dutch consumers. Chairman Björn Fuchs called the filing the “final step” in legal proceedings that began in June 2026.
The Months of Data Behind the Filing
The case is built on VNLOK’s own systematic monitoring through Meta’s advertising library. In Q4 2025, Meta platforms displayed more than 70,000 gambling-related ads to Dutch users. Unlicensed operators accounted for over 95% of those ads every single month. Meta’s removal rates were 3% in October, 5.2% in November, and 4.7% in December.
VNLOK’s August 2026 research found 96.5% of gambling ads in May came from unlicensed operators. The share fell to 93.7% in June, while Meta’s removal rate reached 11% in May and 15% in June. Those figures look like progress until the lifespan data changes the picture entirely. VNLOK found 76% of unlicensed gambling ads in May and 65% in June stayed live for under one day. Operators return under changed identities or new URLs before removal can take effect.
Dutch public broadcaster BNR ran its own audit of the problem in August. The outlet found hundreds of illegal gambling ads on Meta platforms across late 2025 and the first half of 2026. Certain posts gathered tens of thousands of views before disappearing.
What the DSA Demands and Where Meta Stands?
Meta told Dutch broadcaster NOS in June that stopping every illegal gambling ad is not possible. The company said it was actively working to reduce them. At a parliamentary gambling committee meeting earlier this month, Minister Claudia Van Bruggen reported that Meta had been open to government dialogue on the advertising problem. Both platforms committed to providing progress reports on illegal gambling advertising every six months.
VNLOK is not treating those statements of openness as legal compliance. The DSA places structural safeguards obligations on very large online platforms, a designation that formally covers both Facebook and Instagram. Reactive moderation systems, where ads are only removed after complaints, do not satisfy those obligations. Under the European Commission’s DSA enforcement framework, fines for non-compliant very large platforms can reach 6% of global annual turnover. A favourable ruling for VNLOK could prompt the Commission to scrutinise Meta’s DSA compliance at EU level.
Fuchs stated: “We have repeatedly pointed out the scale of the problem to Meta and asked them to cooperate structurally in finding a solution. That has yielded insufficient results. Therefore, we are now submitting the case to the Dutch courts.”
Parliament Votes, and the Motion Passes
The court filing arrived exactly 24 hours before a Dutch House of Representatives vote on September 29. The Bikkers motion, tabled on September 23 by VVD MP Bart Bikkers and fellow lawmakers, called for changes to Dutch gambling law. Those changes would establish that platforms are themselves in violation when illegal gambling ads persist after repeated KSA removal requests, and grant the Kansspelautoriteit powers to impose administrative fines or penalty orders directly on those platforms. The motion passed with a majority of the House. In April 2026 alone, the KSA had already submitted more than 4,600 reports of illegal gambling ads to Meta without that triggering lasting results under existing powers.
VNLOK supports both the court case and the motion, but argues the KSA should not wait for amended legislation to act more forcefully. Fuchs said: “The regulator must hold parties that play a role in reaching Dutch consumers with illegal offerings more emphatically accountable for their responsibility. No legislative amendment is needed for this; the regulator already has those legal options.”
He also made the platform-wide problem explicit. “Meta is currently the party we are taking legal action against, but the problem is broader. If an illegal provider is removed via one platform, the same provider pops up again via another channel. Then we are constantly playing catch-up. All parties in this chain must take responsibility.”
The Revenue That Keeps These Ads Running
Illegal gambling ads persist on Meta partly because they generate money for multiple parties. A May 2026 joint analysis by KVA and VNLOK estimated Meta may earn between €7.3m and €13.6m per year from these ads targeting Dutch users. The figure is modelled from publicly available advertising data rather than confirmed by Meta, and the study does not suggest Meta knowingly allows the ads. Against Meta’s global advertising revenue, that estimated range does not register as a deterrent.
VNLOK reports that unregulated gambling in Holland earns at least €1 billion annually, matching the earnings of the regulated market. The KSA spring 2026 monitoring report highlights the inequality in a more detailed fashion where 91% of Holland’s gamblers only gamble using licensed establishments, while the revenue earned by the licensed establishments is only 53% of the total gambling revenue. Almost half of the gambling revenue of Holland goes to unlicensed gambling sites.
VNLOK’s consumer complaints platform Meld Vals Spel, launched in 2024, tracks public reports on illegal gambling activity. The share of payout-related complaints there has risen from 18% to 32% of all reports in recent months. Licensed operators, barred from untargeted gambling advertising since July 2023 and stripped of sports sponsorship rights in 2025, compete for the same audiences on the same platform as unlicensed rivals who face none of those restrictions.
Dutch Courts and Meta: Three Challenges, Three Different Failures
This is the third significant Dutch legal challenge against Meta in three years. In 2023, an Amsterdam court found Facebook Ireland had processed Dutch users’ personal data without proper consent for advertising from April 2010 to January 2020. Then in March 2026, a Dutch appeals court upheld a ruling requiring Meta to offer non-algorithmic timelines on Facebook and Instagram, finding that Meta’s automatic reset to profiling-based feeds violated DSA article 25’s prohibition on dark patterns. Potential fines in that case have risen to €10 million, and Meta is now before the Dutch Supreme Court.
Each of these challenges highlighted a specific legal problem – data protection for 2023, algorithmic design for 2025-26, and advertising rules currently. At the same time, each of these issues found its way to the Dutch courts instead of Meta’s main EU regulator in Ireland. In the 2025 feed issue, the Commission for Communications Regulation in Ireland did not react to the first challenge made by Bits of Freedom, and this issue found its way to the Dutch courts. The VNLOK summons does the same.
Expert Analysis
The removal rate numbers deserve a harder look than the headlines give them. Meta’s reported removal rate rose from below 5% in Q4 2025 to 15% by June 2026. That shift is real, but a 15% removal rate still leaves most flagged ads active on the platform, while Meta is estimated to earn millions from those same operators each year.
We think the core problem is architectural rather than attitudinal. A reactive moderation pipeline cannot keep pace with operators who cycle through changed identities and URLs after each removal. What this case may ultimately push toward is proactive advertiser verification, where a gambling licence is checked before an ad enters the auction rather than after a complaint arrives. Google already applies a comparable model in its gambling certification programme, requiring advertisers to hold a verified licence before a gambling ad can run in regulated markets. Whether Meta’s architecture could support the same approach is an engineering and legal question. What the Google model does show is that pre-auction licence verification is not a theoretical concept.
Whether an Amsterdam court will compel Meta to implement something comparable remains genuinely uncertain. A ruling in VNLOK’s favour may give other EU markets a legal argument to demand the same structural changes from Meta and other major platforms. This problem is not exclusive to the Netherlands, and Dutch courts have now shown three times that they will act where regulators have not.
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