Dutch gambling trade association VNLOK says Meta isn’t doing nearly enough to keep illegal gambling advertising off Facebook and Instagram, with its latest research finding that more than 93% of the gambling ads it looked at in May and June came from operators holding no Dutch license. The association is already preparing legal action against Meta and has filed a complaint with the European Commission over how the company handles illegal gambling promotion.
VNLOK went through 65,000 gambling advertisements with the largest reach during May and June 2026. Of those examined in May, 96.5% were classified as illegal, with the figure slipping slightly to 93.7% in June. The association also tracked which Facebook pages were buying the ads, and found that 96% of those advertisements pointed toward an unlicensed operator in May, rising to 98.8% in June.
Meta removed 11% of the more than 60,000 illegal advertisements identified in May and 15% of them in June, according to VNLOK. Replacements went up fast, too. The average campaign ran 1.58 days in May and two days in June, while 76% of May ads and 65% of June ads were live for less than 24 hours. Taking an ad down after publication, VNLOK argues, often happens only once it has already pulled in most of the reach it was ever going to get.
Unlicensed operators are also making themselves harder to catch. VNLOK found ads using cloaking, where visitors see different landing pages depending on things like their demographic profile or what time they click, and campaigns that pushed users from Facebook into Telegram channels and then on into casino “mini-apps.” Other advertisers simply copied the names and branding of licensed Dutch gambling companies before sending anyone who clicked to a completely unrelated illegal operator.
The Facebook pages running these ads often had nothing obvious to do with gambling. VNLOK counted more than 100 categories being used to distribute the promotions, including pages presented as fan communities, local government pages, marketing agencies, entertainment sites, and personal blogs. That setup, the association said, lets advertisers restart their campaigns under fresh identities whenever individual pages or ads get removed.
These findings come after a BNR investigation earlier in August found unlicensed casinos advertising specifically to people registered with Cruks, the Dutch national self-exclusion system. Some of those ads promoted casinos that don’t check Cruks at all, framing the register as an unnecessary government restriction. More than 100,000 people are currently on it and cannot gamble with licensed Dutch online operators.
Meta pulled a number of those advertisements and the accounts behind them after BNR got in touch. The company said advertisers have to comply with applicable laws and that it takes enforcement against illegal advertising seriously, though it wouldn’t say how much revenue it collects from gambling ads aimed at Dutch users.
VNLOK and the Keurmerk Verantwoorde Affiliates have previously put that figure somewhere between €7.3 million and €13.6 million a year. Their March study identified 15,114 ads linked to unlicensed operators and estimated they generated roughly 75.8 million impressions in a single month. The revenue number was modeled from publicly available advertising data and pricing assumptions, and the researchers stopped short of claiming Meta knowingly accepted illegal gambling campaigns.
The Kansspelautoriteit has been reporting illegal gambling ads to Meta directly as well. The Dutch regulator filed more than 4,600 reports about illegal ads during April alone, and said unlicensed operators regularly help themselves to the names and logos of recognizable Dutch brands and athletes to make their promotions look legitimate.
VNLOK said in June that it would take Meta to court and file a complaint with the European Commission under the EU Digital Services Act. It wants a Dutch court to rule that Meta has failed its DSA obligations, order changes to the company’s detection and prevention systems, and impose periodic penalties if those changes don’t happen. The complaint asks the European Commission to investigate the same conduct and consider enforcement or sanctions.
What VNLOK is pushing for now is verification of gambling advertisers targeting the Netherlands before their campaigns go live, rather than a system built mainly around taking things down afterward. It also wants better detection of cloaking and Telegram redirects, plus more action from the Kansspelautoriteit against the platforms, affiliates, and marketing companies helping unlicensed operators reach Dutch consumers.