Online gambling losses after the Supreme Court ruling
Recovering money from an online casino is possible, but as a rule only for the losses incurred after the casino should have stepped in. A player who lost €5,400 at Kansino got €1,650 back in June 2026. Since July 2026, when the Supreme Court ruled out the argument that such contracts are void, a case like this turns on the duty of care, evidence, procedure and collecting on the judgment.
Kansino ordered to repay €1,650 of a €5,400 loss
Between 18 June and 12 July 2022 a player staked €300 almost every day at Kansino, the online casino run by Play North Limited of Malta, and each time kept playing until his stake was gone. His net loss came to €5,400. Play North had held a licence from the Netherlands Gambling Authority since 1 October 2021. The player sought to recover his entire loss, on the ground that Kansino should have intervened.
The subdistrict court in Zaanstad found partly in his favour on 18 June 2026. A casino must intervene when there are signs that someone is gambling excessively, and playing frequently is one such sign. The rules do not say what counts as frequent. The player therefore relied on a survey in which 3% of 599 online players said they played (almost) every day. Kansino did not dispute that, and the court held that this player belonged to that group (paras 4.6-4.10). A pattern like this only becomes visible after a while. The court set that period at two weeks: by 2 July 2022 Kansino should at least have spoken to the player. The conversation took place only on or shortly after 12 July (paras 4.11-4.12).
The court therefore awarded only what the player had staked after 2 July: €1,650, plus €299.48 in extrajudicial collection costs. The court inferred from what happened after the late conversation that a conversation on 2 July would have made a difference: the player did not gamble at Kansino again (paras 4.12-4.13). Because both parties were partly unsuccessful, each bore its own costs of the proceedings (para. 4.15).
Kansino held a Dutch licence. Until July 2026 most cases concerned casinos without one. In those cases players argued that their agreement was void, so that every euro lost had to be repaid. According to the District Court of Amsterdam, some fifty such cases were pending before the district courts in mid-2024 (Amsterdam Court of Appeal, 15 April 2025, para. 2.4), and they sometimes produced large awards, such as an award of €119,634.36 by the District Court of the Northern Netherlands in February 2025. The Supreme Court closed that route on 3 July 2026: such an agreement is not void. A claim based on a defect of consent or in tort remains possible (para. 3.2.7). That ruling is discussed elsewhere on this site.
The casino must act on signs of problem gambling
Against a licensed casino, the claim rests on the duty of care under the Betting and Gaming Act (Wok), a form of consumer protection. The casino must monitor its players' gambling behaviour and watch for signs of excessive gambling: playing more often or for longer, unusual betting, playing at odd hours. Where there is a reasonable suspicion of a gambling problem, it must talk to the player (Section 31m Wok, as summarised by the District Court of The Hague, para. 4.2). Those rules apply to licence holders. Against a casino without a licence, what remains is a claim in tort or on the ground of a defect of consent, without those detailed standards applying directly. A licence for online gambling could not be applied for until 1 April 2021, so anyone who played online before then was playing with an operator without a Dutch licence (Amsterdam Court of Appeal, 15 April 2025, para. 2.2).
For play before 1 October 2024 the rules set no monetary thresholds, and two cases against licensed operators foundered on that. In May 2025 the subdistrict court in Amsterdam dismissed the claim of a player who had lost €20,117 at Betca B.V. in three weeks. A large loss or high deposits were not a statutory warning sign at the time, and the player stayed within the limits he had set himself (para. 4.17). In February 2026 the District Court of The Hague dismissed a claim for €42,220 against the operator of casino777.nl. The player had set herself a limit of €8,000 a day, and the casino was not required to check the income she had stated (paras 4.6-4.9). Both players were ordered to pay the casino's costs of the proceedings: €1,221 before the subdistrict court and €5,764 before the district court, of which €2,995 was the court registry fee.
Even then, the door was left slightly ajar. According to the subdistrict court in Amsterdam, a casino could in some circumstances be expected to intervene before 1 October 2024 as well, on the basis of the size of the deposits or long playing sessions (para. 4.17).
Since 1 October 2024 the rules do set thresholds. A deposit limit of €150 a month or more for a player under 24, or of €350 for an older player, is in itself a warning sign (Section 17 of the regulation on recruitment, advertising and addiction prevention, the Regeling werving, reclame en verslavingspreventie kansspelen). Moreover, such a limit may be set only after contact with casino staff trained for that purpose (Section 3.19d of the Remote Gaming Regulation, the Regeling kansspelen op afstand).
The Netherlands Gambling Authority has also set thresholds for cases where the player's income is unknown. Net deposits of more than €700 a month, or €300 for a player under 24, are then a sign that someone cannot bear the financial consequences. In that case the regulator considers it appropriate to block further deposits until the end of the month, or until there is reason to believe that the player can afford it (Responsible Gambling Policy Rule 2024, the Beleidsregel verantwoord spelen 2024, Sections 3.1.12 and 3.1.13).
The subdistrict court in Amsterdam described those thresholds as concrete warning signs that a casino must take into account under its duty of care, but declined to apply them directly to play that took place in November 2023 (para. 4.18). No judgment applying them has yet appeared in the case law analysed.
Claims against gaming arcades face a further hurdle. In November 2023 a subdistrict court judge in Amsterdam found against an arcade that had let in a player registered in Cruks, the national gambling exclusion register, without checking properly (para. 3.8). The Amsterdam Court of Appeal took a different view in a comparable case in February 2025. The Cruks rule in Section 30u Wok protects against gambling addiction, not against gambling losses, so there is no right to damages. Dutch lawyers call this the relativity requirement of Section 6:163 DCC: the rule breached must be meant to protect against the loss claimed (para. 4.8). The subdistrict court in Haarlem followed that approach in April 2026 (para. 4.24). Whether this defence also helps an online casino has not yet been decided in the case law analysed: the casino raised it in the Hague case, but the court did not need to address it (paras 3.3 and 4.5).
Only losses after the failure are recoverable
The amount follows from a comparison: where would the player stand if the casino had kept to the rules? In the Kansino case, that meant the stakes after 2 July. In the Amsterdam arcade case, it meant what the player lost on the days he was wrongly let in. The moment of the failure therefore determines the amount.
It must also be established that intervening would have made a difference. The Amsterdam Court of Appeal dismissed one claim partly because the player had identified himself with a foreign passport under which he was not registered in Cruks, so he would have been let in even after a proper check (paras 4.4 and 4.9). By contrast, the defence that the player would simply have gambled elsewhere failed in a case against a land-based casino in Brabant. The District Court of East Brabant assumed that other casinos would then also have turned him away (para. 2.28).
The loss itself must be proved, and in the cases analysed that is where things went wrong more than once. In the Brabant case it was established that the casino had acted unlawfully: it had not banned a player it knew was taking cocaine on the premises. The player claimed €379,000, but the court estimated his loss at €5,000 because he could not support the claim with documents (paras 2.21 and 2.25). In the Amsterdam arcade case the player did manage to prove his loss. There, 41 cash withdrawals at the arcade over eight days led to an award of €5,858, as no explanation other than gambling was conceivable. He could not prove the €3,500 he said he had staked in cash (paras 3.10-3.11).
How proceedings against an online casino work
The first step is gathering the evidence. The starting point is a month-by-month overview of deposits and withdrawals taken from the player's own bank statements. The casino's records are needed as well: playing history, limits set, messages and notes of conversations. A player can request them with a subject access request under the GDPR. If the casino refuses, the player can ask the court to order it to comply. Against a casino established in the Netherlands, or outside the EU and targeting players in the Netherlands, that can be done by petition, without the need for a lawyer (Sections 35 and 4 of the Dutch GDPR Implementation Act, UAVG). Against a casino in Malta or elsewhere in the EU, the player has to bring ordinary proceedings by writ of summons. That is why the District Court of The Hague on 31 July 2025 referred requests by Unibet players to such proceedings (paras 4.4-4.5), and the same court on 24 December 2025 did so again (paras 2.4-2.6).
An Amsterdam case shows that casinos do not always comply with such requests. Unibet companies gave two players their full playing history, but then withheld it from all the other players in that case, relying on an exception in Maltese legislation (para. 2.14). A request for the transaction data under the general right to inspect documents (Section 194 DCCP) failed in The Hague, because the players had not explained why they could not extract it from their own bank statements (para. 4.13). How that right of inspection works is set out elsewhere on this site.
Next comes a formal letter holding the casino liable. In the Kansino case the player sent reminders and a letter of demand before having a writ of summons served (para. 2.2). If the casino does not pay, claims of up to €25,000 go to the subdistrict court (Section 93(a) DCCP). The Dutch courts have jurisdiction even if the casino's terms name the courts of Malta. A consumer may sue in the courts for the place where he or she is domiciled if the business directs its activities to that Member State, and a jurisdiction clause agreed before the dispute cannot depart from that (Articles 17 to 19 Brussels I bis). Such targeting can be shown by, for example, deposits via iDEAL, advertising on Dutch websites, a telephone number with the Dutch country code and bonuses for players in the Netherlands (District Court of Amsterdam, 6 March 2024, para. 4.5). Dutch law then applies (Article 6 Rome I and Article 4 Rome II; Kansino case, para. 4.3).
Foreign casinos nevertheless often contested jurisdiction. In the judgments analysed they lost that argument every time, including the argument that a player who was a businessman or a police officer was not a consumer (District Court of North Holland, 15 November 2023, para. 4.5; District Court of Gelderland, 20 March 2024, para. 2.4). It does take time. In Utrecht such a defence caused a delay of almost four months (para. 3.11), and the court in Arnhem pointed out that Malta does not return proof of service (para. 2.12). In one case the casino was granted leave to appeal against the ruling on jurisdiction before the rest of the case went ahead (North Holland, para. 4.15). Other courts, in Arnhem and The Hague, refused to allow that. Kansino, as a licence holder, did not raise this defence (para. 4.2).
The player's costs of dealing with such a challenge are usually awarded on the fixed scale the courts apply (North Holland, 15 November 2023, para. 4.13). A player in Amsterdam received his actual costs of €2,100, because the casino could have known that its defence was bound to fail (para. 4.12).
How long a case takes also depends on the wider case law. A Unibet case brought in November 2022 was stayed until the Supreme Court had ruled on nullity, and as a result was still awaiting a decision on the merits in April 2025 (Amsterdam Court of Appeal, 15 April 2025, paras 2.3-2.4). Even without a stay it can take a long time: the Brabant case was on the cause list from 2018, and final judgment was given in January 2023.
A judgment is not the same as being paid
Against a casino with a Dutch licence, enforcement has played no part in the case law analysed. The disputes over attachment and enforcement all concern foreign operators without a licence in the player's country. The case of an Austrian player shows how hard enforcement can be there. In 2021 he was awarded €32,368 in Austria against Mr Green of Malta, and in May 2022 he levied a third-party attachment on money held by Adyen in Amsterdam, which passed players' deposits on to the casino. The provisional relief judge in Amsterdam lifted the attachment in August 2022, holding that the money held by Adyen belonged to the players and not to the casino (paras 4.3-4.4).
The Amsterdam Court of Appeal overturned that decision on 30 January 2024, because the casino had not shown it to be likely that the money belonged to the players (para. 3.20). By then the money had gone. Adyen had paid it to the casino after the first judgment, and whether the player would still receive anything depended on an undertaking given by Adyen (paras 3.23-3.24). The court ruled the same way that day in the case of a second Austrian player.
The largest amounts came from default judgments, where the casino did not appear in the proceedings: €207,983.62 and €128,415.76 from the District Court of North Holland on 11 October 2023 and on 27 December 2023. Such a judgment is vulnerable. The casino can file an objection (verzet), after which the same court hears the case again with both parties. The time limit for doing so only starts to run once a bailiff has served the judgment on the casino itself, once it is clear that the casino knows of it, or otherwise when the judgment is enforced (Section 143 DCCP).
In January 2024 the District Court of Limburg ordered BML Group, by default judgment, to pay €147,759.85. According to the court, BML only learned of this in April 2025, through the player's attachment, and it then filed an objection. The provisional relief judge in Limburg suspended enforcement on condition that security of €192,000 was provided (paras 4.3 and 4.8). All of these judgments rested on the agreement being void or voidable, a ground the Supreme Court has since rejected.
German and Austrian players who had obtained judgments against casinos in Curaçao had them recognised there, including a German judgment for €372,016 (Court of First Instance of Curaçao, 10 November 2025). Whether any money follows depends on the case. One casino, which had been declared bankrupt, had no assets left (Joint Court of Justice, 23 May 2023, para. 2.14). In another, the claims were settled after the bankruptcy order, and because the casino turned out to be financially sound, the court set aside the bankruptcy order (Joint Court of Justice, 30 July 2024, paras 2.4 and 2.7). Those judgments, too, rested on nullity, under German and Austrian law.
What does this mean for players trying to recover losses?
The first question is where and when the gambling took place: at a casino with or without a Dutch licence, and before or after 1 October 2024. Against a casino without a licence, the easiest route is closed and enforcement is the greatest risk. Against a licensed casino, everything turns on the duty of care, and on the moment at which the casino should have stepped in.
That moment can be found by setting the monthly overview of deposits and withdrawals against the warning signs in the rules and the case law: playing (almost) every day, as in the Kansino case, and for play after 1 October 2024 also a deposit limit of €150 or more for a player under 24, or of €350 for an older player. Only what was staked after that point is eligible for compensation. Time matters too. A claim for damages becomes time-barred five years after the player became aware of both the loss and the identity of the casino liable for it, and the Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal applied that period separately to each breach of the duty of care (paras 4.5-4.6).
The only player in the case law analysed who won against a licensed online casino got back just under a third of his loss and bore his own costs of the proceedings.
Frequently asked questions
Does a deposit limit I set myself count against me?
For play before 1 October 2024, a limit the player had set himself counted against him in the cases analysed. Since then, when a high limit is set, the casino must ask whether the player realises he could lose that amount, point him to Cruks and the national prevention service, and send him a written record of that conversation by email (Section 3.19e of the Remote Gaming Regulation). If no such record exists, that is a point worth pursuing.
What if the casino had no Dutch licence?
In that case the route based on the contract being void has been closed since 3 July 2026, leaving only a claim in tort or on the ground of a defect of consent, without the detailed duty-of-care rules. Whether an operator holds a licence, and since when, can be checked on the Netherlands Gambling Authority's Kansspelwijzer. Nobody could apply for one before 1 April 2021, so all online gambling before that date falls into this category.
Can a claims company request my playing data for me?
Not as a matter of course. Under Article 80(1) GDPR an organisation may act on behalf of players only if, among other things, it is not-for-profit. A limited partnership whose litigation funder charged a fee of up to 36% had failed to show, in preliminary relief proceedings (kort geding), that it met that requirement (provisional relief judge in Amsterdam, 7 July 2025, paras 4.7-4.9). Players can make the request themselves, individually or together, as 51 Unibet players did in The Hague.
Cited case law
Supreme Court: ECLI:NL:HR:2026:1159 (3 July 2026; an agreement with an unlicensed operator is neither void nor voidable under Section 3:40 DCC).
Courts of Appeal: ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2024:214 (Amsterdam, 30 January 2024; attachment of funds held by Adyen revived, but the money had already been paid to the casino); ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2024:215 (Amsterdam, 30 January 2024; parallel case of a second player); ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2025:290 (Amsterdam, 4 February 2025; Section 30u Wok does not protect against gambling losses); ECLI:NL:GHAMS:2025:1009 (Amsterdam, 15 April 2025; operator's appeal against an interim decision inadmissible); ECLI:NL:GHARL:2019:5102 (Arnhem-Leeuwarden, 18 June 2019; limitation period runs separately for each breach of the duty of care); ECLI:NL:OGHACMB:2024:174 (Joint Court of Justice, 30 July 2024; bankruptcy order set aside after payment, the business being sound); ECLI:NL:OGHACMB:2023:68 (Joint Court of Justice, 23 May 2023; bankruptcy of a sub-licensee without assets upheld).
District Courts: ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2026:6041 (North Holland, subdistrict court, 18 June 2026; Kansino intervened too late, €1,650 of €5,400); ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2026:3802 (North Holland, subdistrict court, 8 April 2026; arcades not liable despite Cruks registration); ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2026:11536 (The Hague, 18 February 2026; casino777.nl did not breach its duty of care); ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2025:26804 (The Hague, 24 December 2025; GDPR request against Maltese operator referred to proceedings by writ of summons); ECLI:NL:RBLIM:2025:9449 (Limburg, 30 September 2025, preliminary relief; enforcement of a default judgment suspended subject to security); ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2025:14322 (The Hague, 31 July 2025; UAVG does not apply, request under Section 194 DCCP dismissed); ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2025:4721 (Amsterdam, 7 July 2025, preliminary relief; claims vehicle's claim declared inadmissible (Article 80 GDPR)); ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2025:3147 (Amsterdam, subdistrict court, 9 May 2025; deposits before 1 October 2024 not a statutory warning sign); ECLI:NL:RBNNE:2025:702 (Northern Netherlands, 26 February 2025; jurisdiction over Maltese operator, €119,634.36 on grounds of nullity); ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2024:1809 (Gelderland, 20 March 2024; jurisdiction challenge dismissed, player is a consumer); ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2024:1293 (Amsterdam, 6 March 2024; jurisdiction challenge dismissed, actual costs awarded); ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2024:508 (Mid-Netherlands, 7 February 2024; jurisdiction challenge dismissed after four months' delay); ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2024:443 (North Holland, 17 January 2024; jurisdiction challenge dismissed, interim appeal allowed); ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2024:54 (The Hague, 3 January 2024; jurisdiction challenge dismissed, interim appeal refused); ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2023:13872 (North Holland, 27 December 2023, by default; €128,415.76 awarded); ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2023:7591 (Amsterdam, subdistrict court, 24 November 2023; arcade liable for €5,858 for admitting a player registered in Cruks); ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2023:11879 (North Holland, 15 November 2023; jurisdiction challenge dismissed, fixed-scale costs); ECLI:NL:RBGEL:2023:5796 (Gelderland, 25 October 2023; jurisdiction challenge dismissed, service in Malta causes delay); ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2023:11433 (North Holland, 11 October 2023, by default; €207,983.62 awarded); ECLI:NL:RBOBR:2023:214 (East Brabant, 18 January 2023; casino acted unlawfully, loss estimated at €5,000); ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2022:5004 (Amsterdam, 19 August 2022, preliminary relief; attachment of funds held by Adyen lifted, overturned on appeal); ECLI:NL:OGEAC:2025:335 (Court of First Instance of Curaçao, 10 November 2025; leave to enforce a German judgment).