Dutch parties approve online sports betting with restrictions
Ruling coalition parties VVD and PvdA claim to have reached an agreement on (online) sports betting regulation, consisting of two amendments to the proposed remote gambling bill currently under consideration by the Dutch House of Representatives.
In order to combat matchfixing, the first amendment prohibits betting on amateur matches as well as side bets on events that may be easily controlled by a single individual (e.g., yellow cards in soccer, double faults in tennis). Betting on halftime scores or total number of goals scored, however, will be allowed.
The second amendment mandates operators to report suspicious betting patterns to the Sports Betting Intelligence Unit of the Netherlands Gaming Authority (Kansspelautoriteit).
Both NOC*NSF, the overall coordinating Dutch sports organization, and KNVB, the Dutch football association, have expressed satisfaction with the proposals.
Nonetheless, the agreement and its timing raise a number of questions.
Earlier, State Secretary Dijkhoff of Security and Justice promised the House of Representatives to answer its second round of questions regarding the proposed remote gaming bill “around the middle of November at the latest.” Contrary to Dijkhoff’s promise, these answers have not yet been provided. This week’s “agreement” is also rather meager, to say the least. Could it simply be meant as a diversion from having to announce new delays at the department of Security and Justice?
To add insult to injury, sports law researcher Ben van Rompuy claims that the proposed prohibitions on certain side bets are unlikely to be effective at all: “In case of national restrictions, players will simply move to foreign operators. Similar bans in Spain and Italy have already failed.”
Furthermore, Eric Konings, sports betting integrity officer at Unibet, feels that operators should be more closely involved in reporting and combating matchfixing, pointing toward the successful cooperation between operators, regulators and sports associations in the UK.
