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Dutch licensed operators sue Meta as offshore brands reach 41% of projected revenue
Licensed Dutch operators have taken the illegal-ad fight onto Facebook and Instagram.
VNLOK asked the Amsterdam District Court to find that Meta failed the Digital Services Act on illegal gambling ads aimed at Dutch users. Also VNLOK asked to force tighter filters before those ads go live.
VNLOK is the trade association of licensed online gambling operators in the Netherlands.
The organization’s own checks put more than 90% of studied Facebook gambling ads with unlicensed sites, while Meta took down 11% of those ads in May and 15% in June.
VNLOK also names search results, cloaked redirects and Telegram as parallel routes, with Meta first in court.
Blask data shows why that ad layer sits on a live onshore/offshore split. Offshore CEB grew 6.1 p.p. YoY, lifting its share of the monthly baseline from 34.9% to 41%.
Licensed search demand cooled through the year, as the unlicensed share of Blask Index rose from 12.4% to 18.6%.
Attention to unlicensed brands grew at a point when they already hold two-fifths of the monthly CEB baseline. Their search share has not caught that weight.