Dutch iGaming Licensees Must Rebuild Customer Databases from Scratch

Sander Dekker, the Netherlands’ Minister for Legal Protection, has revealed that the iGaming firms that obtain licences to launch in the Dutch regulated market from July 2021 will have to build customer databases from scratch.

Licensees will be prohibited from using any customer data gathered from the previous activity on the currently illegal, unregulated market.

Dekker also revealed that the operators who have offered services to Dutch customers illegally in the last two-and-a-half years prior to next year’s launch of the regulated market may have licence applications rejected.

The measures were revealed by the Minister while answering the questions from members of parliament about the Remote Gaming Act, which will come into force on 1 January 2021.

The People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) had raised concerns over how the new legislation would attract players to legal offerings when an estimated one million players were already gambling on unlicensed iGaming sites despite their current prohibition.

Dekker said that companies’ licence applications could be rejected if they had previously offered services to Dutch consumers illegally, unless they had ceased to do so for at least two and a half years.

He added that such companies would then find themselves prohibited from using any customer databases that they had collected during previous illegal operations.