FDJ United has provided an alternative solution to the advertising ban being proposed in the Netherlands, which it warned would embolden the country’s black market.
Speaking at Gaming in Holland, the company’s Chief Online Betting and Gaming Officer, Pascal Chaffard, said that while he understands the political logic behind the proposals, any changes must be ‘founded in evidence’.
He said: “Targeted restrictions tied to compliance standards would achieve the same consumer protection goal without driving players to the unrelegated market where there is no protection at all.
“The paradox we are faced with is that Europe’s most consumer protection-conscious markets, through their own set of measures, does the most damage to consumer protection.
“Every restrictive measure aimed at licensed operators that does not simultaneously address illegal operators makes the problem worse. The advertising ban, as currently proposed, risks accelerating the risk shift to illegal operators that everyone says they want to prevent.”
Calls for an advertising ban have been led by State Secretary Claudia van Bruggen, who argues that current rules cannot effectively shield vulnerable players from gambling advertising.
However, Björn Fuchs, Chair of the trade body VNLOK, also speaking at Gaming in Holland, cautioned that such a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ will only serve to harm player protection efforts in the long term
He said: “You need a holistic strategy in which regulation moves towards a system that protects the consumer and is based on proportionality and evidence, because if a policy fails, it is the consumer base that pays the price.”
‘The black market does not respect borders, and neither can our response to it’
Chaffard called on stakeholders from across the market to work together to tackle the black market, and these efforts go beyond the Netherlands.
He stressed that the issue is a ‘transnational problem’, confirming that FDJ United is looking to laser in on it through the formation of a task force to combat the black market.
At the heart of the task force’s findings, Chaffard added, is the need to educate players and policymakers on the black market, reduce the visibility of the black market and improve the customer journey within the regulated sector.
“The black market does not respect borders, and neither can our response to it,” he explained. “Let us better align, because reclaiming this market is not something of any operator or regulator can do alone. It will take all of us.“
Data from the VNLOK suggests that over 90% of gambling advertisements on Meta are from the black market. Meanwhile, H2 Gambling Capital suggests that in the last two years, the channelisation rate has decreased from 70% to almost 50%.
Chaffard ended by again stressing that ‘the extent to which the visibility of unlicensed operators lays at the root of the growth of the black market’.
He said that FDJ United is currently ‘actively engaged’ with the European Commission to educate them on the issue of illegal operators, and wil continue to push the commission to reinforce the tools it has to take down illegal gambling sites at a quicker rate..
Chaffard concluded: “We need to educate the generations to come on the difference between the safeguards provided on the licensed market and the risks presented by the unlicensed one. We need to break the stranglehold that unlicensed operators out of the advertising space, and we need to ensure that we innovate our products whilst dismantling the ecosystem that supports unlicensed operators.”
