Despite the Dutch government’s mid-2023 ban on “untargeted” gambling advertisements, a new academic study has found that several licensed operators may have breached strict age-restriction regulations on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms.
Significant Non-Compliance Among Offline Licensees
Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong and the University of Bristol analyzed 277 paid advertisements from licensed Dutch operators using the transparency tools provided by the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The findings were striking: 11.2% of the ads analyzed targeted age groups including those aged 18 to 23, a demographic strictly protected under Dutch law.
The data revealed a stark contrast in compliance based on license type:
- Online License Holders: Maintained a high compliance rate of 92.7%.
- Offline License Holders: Showed significantly lower compliance, with nearly 30% of their ads breaching age-targeting rules.
One high-profile example cited was Holland Casino; researchers estimated that one of its ads reached over 21,000 Dutch users in the prohibited 18–24 cohort, accounting for more than 15% of its total reach.
Regulatory Context and Platform Failures
The Netherlands has prohibited gambling advertising aimed at individuals under 24 since 2013. In 2022, Franc Weerwind, then-minister for legal protection, stated:
“Advertising is a means of directing people to the legal offer, but the importance of addiction prevention is more important. With this I want to protect vulnerable groups such as young people in particular.”
Researchers identified several “causes behind non-compliance,” including Meta’s broad reporting brackets (18–24) that do not align with the specific 18–23 Dutch legal age-restriction. Additionally, automated tools like Meta’s “Advantage+” often default to age 18, leading to inadvertent violations.
