Since March 27, 2026, 59 DMCA complaints have been filed against Kansspelautoriteit, the gambling authority in the Netherlands. According to the complaints, pages on the regulator’s website copied content from other gambling-related sites and should therefore disappear from Google Search results.
Search Visibility Becomes the Pressure Point
DMCA notices are supposed to protect copyright owners. Google says that it often receives requests to delist content from Search when web pages are alleged to violate copyright laws. But in gambling, the procedure could become a visibility tool as well.
Search rankings are an important route for players looking to verify the legality of the casino. But for unlicensed gambling sites and their affiliates competing for the same traffic, they are also valuable.
Legal Casino Guide Was Among the Targets
Among the targeted areas was the Kansspelwijzer section of the KSA website. It lists online casinos that are legal in the Netherlands. According to industry reporting, Kansspelwijzer was included in a complaint alleging copied content from Atlas Live, a Curaçao-based software provider.
Kansspelwijzer is different from casino review or promo pages. Its goal is to help players differentiate between legal and illegal gambling platforms.
Notably, these complaints came from different identities. The notices reportedly used different private individuals and different company names. Some of them claimed to be filed on behalf of sportsbook software providers such as SBTech and Delasport. However, the report described it as unlikely that those companies were actually behind the filings.
Affiliate Problem Reaches the Regulator
Dutch gambling expert Frank Kruit described the incident as false claiming. He noted that such DMCA techniques had previously been employed against legal gambling affiliates in the Netherlands. Kruit linked such activity to illegal operators or related affiliates trying to damage the licensed market.
An issue that appeared to be affecting affiliate sites commercially has now reached the regulator. This is critical since the affected pages form a public information layer around regulated gambling.
Google Is Used by Both Sides
According to media coverage, the KSA itself has filed over 60 government complaints to Google about removing illegal gambling sites and affiliates from search results for violating Dutch law. BetSpino, in particular, was cited as an example.
In that sense, Google Search has become part of the enforcement environment, where the regulator can seek to reduce the visibility of illegal supply. Suspected bad-faith actors may now attempt to do the same by abusing the copyright process.
Bottom Line
Gambling regulation is not limited to licensing, penalties, and domain blocking. It is also a matter of whether reliable public information is still available when users look for it. The current challenge for the Dutch market is whether Google can separate genuine copyright claims from tactics that distort regulated search results.
