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The Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) has issued a cease and desist order to both the National Postcode Lottery and the Friends Lottery with a deadline to stop offering online games that are outside the authorisation of their lottery operator permits.
The KSA issued the order on May 30, with a deadline to stop. If they do, both lotteries will be subject to a fine of €250,000 ($268,105) per week, with a maximum penalty of €1m ($1.072m).
The Friends Lottery has until June 13 to stop its operations and the National Postcode Lottery has until the same date.
The lotteries have been found guilty by the KSA of offering games of chance on their websites which are not covered by the lottery licences that they both hold.
The games in question for the National Postcode Lottery are Deal or No Deal, Suitcase Hunt, One against 50 and Move That Truck. The lottery, the cease and desist notice stated, is in violation of Article 1 of the Games of Chance Act.
The Friends Lottery must shut down its offering of Friends Lottery Millionaires, Clubman and Bingo Crush as it “is offering more than just entry tickets and that is not permitted under a lottery licence”, according to the order.
The regulator also found that the games on offer are not part of the exception offered by Article 31, which does allow selling remote participation tickets without having a remote gaming licence.
“With the Remote Games Lottery, NPL offers more online than just participation tickets,” the KSA said.
Officials were first informed of the violation on July 27, 2022. The date of that notice in part informed the KSA’s decision to give the National Postcode Lottery only 28 working days to shut down the games operations. The decision for the Friends Lottery contained identical dates and wording.
In the order, the KSA also cited safety, writing that as various consumer protection rules apply to different categories of games of chance, lotteries without permits should not suddenly be adding extra types of games to their rosters with no supervision.
