De Kansspelautoriteit (Ksa) has issued a formal warning to Smart Gaming, operator of the online gambling brand Betnation, after mandatory checks against the Dutch self-exclusion register Cruks — also known as the Gokstop — were not performed for a number of players between January and March 2025.
What Failed and Why It Matters
Betnation attributed the lapse to a technical error. Upon discovery, the operator conducted a manual review to identify affected players. That review revealed that for a small group, it could not be established with certainty afterwards whether they were registered in Cruks during the period in question. One player has been confirmed as having been registered in Cruks and was nonetheless able to participate in online gambling during this time.
The stakes are significant. Cruks currently has approximately 118,000 registered users — individuals who have voluntarily enrolled to protect themselves from gambling-related harm. Under Dutch law, licensed operators must verify Cruks status before granting access to any gambling product. Those registered must be barred from legal online casinos, slot machine halls, and land-based casinos across the Netherlands.
Players who self-register in Cruks do so to protect themselves — they must be able to rely on licensed operators honouring that barrier without exception.
How Cruks Verification Works in Practice
Under the Dutch Remote Gambling Act, every licensed operator must query the Cruks database at the point of login or registration — not just at onboarding. This means a player who self-registers in Cruks after creating an account must be blocked from their next session. The obligation is continuous, not a one-time check, making real-time API reliability a direct compliance dependency for every Dutch licence holder.
Mitigating Factors and the Regulator's Response
The Ksa acknowledged several steps Betnation took following the incident. Betnation self-reported the failure to the regulator — a factor the Ksa weighed in its decision to issue a warning rather than pursue a heavier sanction. The operator also financially compensated affected players and committed to working with responsible gambling partners to identify what additional support, such as counselling, care, or educational courses, could be offered.
Why Self-Reporting Matters in Regulatory Outcomes
The Ksa's decision to issue a warning rather than a fine or licence suspension was explicitly linked to Betnation's voluntary disclosure. Dutch gambling regulation, like many EU frameworks, treats proactive self-reporting as a material mitigating factor. Operators without an internal incident-detection and escalation protocol risk discovering failures only after a regulator audit — at which point the mitigating value of self-reporting is lost entirely.
Compliance Signal for Dutch Operators
The Ksa was unambiguous that a warning does not soften its expectations going forward. Operators bear full responsibility for maintaining functioning verification systems and must identify and resolve technical issues immediately. Given that Cruks underpins the entire responsible gambling framework in the Netherlands, any failure — however unintentional — carries direct harm potential for vulnerable individuals.
For compliance teams across the Dutch market, this case reinforces that self-reporting and remediation reduce regulatory exposure, but do not eliminate it. The Ksa has previously issued an AML compliance directive to Unibet over separate compliance failures, signalling a pattern of close regulatory scrutiny across licensed operators. The Ksa has also funded five new gambling harm prevention projects to address problem gambling at the population level — underscoring that Cruks failures carry consequences beyond individual regulatory exposure.
According to KSA.
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