What starts as a normal-looking ad ends up being an illegal gambling adventure. And nobody seems to be able to stop it.
Imagine this: you are scrolling through Instagram somewhat mindlessly. Your eye catches an ad from a well-known casino – Fair Play or maybe even Holland Casino. Looks trustworthy, right? But as soon as you click, you land on a shady gambling site via a strange app no one is monitoring. And yes, that really does happen. Every day.
The clever trick of the bad guys
Illegal gambling providers know how to play social media cleverly. Their ads look just like the real thing – as if they came from a legitimate casino. But appearances can be deceiving. They sometimes disguise their ads as something completely different: medical products, offline entertainment, or even a wellness treatment. Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) seems to be falling for it entirely.
And it works. Massively, in fact. Gambling Club editors found several such fake ads. If you click on them, you are first sent to an app. Still sounds fairly harmless. Until you log in and find out you are on an illegal gambling site. With no supervision, no protection, no limits.
Fair Play sounds the alarm, but feels powerless
Björn Fuchs, Chief Digital Officer of Fair Play Casino Online, sees it with sadness.
‘We know this is happening. We have reported it to Meta many times,’ he says. ‘But it feels like mopping up.’
And that is putting it mildly. Despite reports and warnings, the number of illegal ads continues to grow. As if Meta is not looking, or just letting it happen.
Affiliates with a double agenda?
Before the legalisation of the Dutch gambling market, it was teeming with foreign providers. Even then, they worked with Dutch affiliates – websites that redirected players in exchange for money. After legalisation, this was only allowed with a licence.
But you guessed it: there are gaps. Big ones. Some affiliates have found a way to advertise via Instagram and Facebook anyway, without permission. And who pays the price for that? The player.
Players lose more than money
At illegal casinos, there is no supervision, no addiction treatment, no playing limit. People can go deeper and deeper into trouble unnoticed. Debt. Addiction. Relationship problems. And meanwhile: fancy talk and glitter ads on your timeline.
The Kansspelautoriteit does what it can and hands out fines where necessary, but it feels like drops in the ocean. The real problem lies with the platforms that allow the ads – and the crafty marketers who circumvent rules as if it were child’s play.