A German player has been awarded a refund for most of his losses after sports betting operator Bet3000 allowed deposits well above the legal limit.
With major sporting events approaching in 2026, the French gambling market is set to experience rapid growth. The French National Gaming Authority (ANJ) is strengthening its control measures to regulate operators’ practices and protect players.
Three former employees of the Chaudfontaine Casino are being prosecuted for exploiting a technical flaw to embezzle gaming chips, causing an estimated loss of €40,000.
The legal gambling market is under pressure, while the illegal one is growing. Dutch State Secretary Arno Rutte is worried. Heavy gamblers, in particular, are seeking refuge outside the licensed offer.
Esmee Ipema, a well-known personality among Dutch television viewers, is using her fame to promote gambling platforms that operate outside the legal framework.
2024-25 was a financially tumultuous year for the UK Gambling Commission. Its overall expenditure rose by almost half, an unprecedented increase largely attributed to legal costs associated with litigation around the fourth National Lottery licence.
No age verification, no license, but betting with autoplay was fully available. For thousands of Dutch people, it was child’s play to gamble on banned sites. Now, the foreign gambling company Starscream Limited is being presented with the bill: a fine of over 4.2 million euros.
They lost thousands of euros in just a few clicks. Young adults were given free rein to keep gambling at ComeOn casino. The Kansspelautoriteit is now intervening and imposing a fine of 750,000 euros.
In the Netherlands, gambling is a growing part of everyday life, but the mechanisms involved, the risks and the means of prevention are often poorly understood. That’s why OpenOverGokken.nl has launched new educational content to explain gambling in simple language, accessible to everyone, without minimising the risks or dramatising the practices.
With gambling on the increase in cafés and bars in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, a new bill aims to tackle unauthorised gaming terminals and clarify a legal framework deemed obsolete.
As European countries tighten up their national frameworks, a common dynamic is emerging: shared technical standards, similar control tools, increasing use of artificial intelligence and closer cooperation between regulators.
“They pretend to follow the rules, but meanwhile, they earn billions.” While dozens of countries ban gambling advertisements, Meta simply keeps selling them. In India, Malaysia, and the Philippines, among others, Facebook and Instagram are running at full speed in an illegal advertising circuit.
The National Gaming Authority (ANJ) has analysed and approved operators’ promotional strategies for 2026. It has imposed new constraints to limit the increase in advertising budgets and reduce the risks associated with overexposure of players.
In 2025, the Gaming Commission (GC) increased the number of updates to its blacklist of unauthorised sites. More than 160 sites were blocked during the year.
The gambling platform Polymarket has announced that it will not pay out to users who placed bets on a US invasion of Venezuela, despite the spectacular arrest of President Nicolás Maduro by US troops. This decision has angered users who thought they had won a million-dollar jackpot.
