Dutch gambling trade body VNLOK has formally summoned Meta to the Amsterdam District Court over illegal gambling advertising on Facebook and Instagram, escalating legal action it first announced in June. The association wants the court to rule that Meta is failing its obligations under the EU Digital Services Act and to force the company into stronger measures against unlicensed gambling operators targeting Dutch users.
VNLOK, which represents licensed online gambling operators in the Netherlands, said repeated discussions with Meta produced nothing close to sufficient change. Chairman Björn Fuchs said the association had raised the scale of illegal advertising with Meta again and again, asking for a structural solution before going to court. A complaint over the same issue went to the European Commission in June.
Its latest research found unlicensed operators behind 96.5% of the 65,000 highest-reach gambling advertisements examined in May, and 93.7% in June. VNLOK separately found that 96% of gambling ads running through identified Facebook pages in May linked to illegal operators, climbing to 98.8% in June. All of those figures come from VNLOK’s own monitoring and haven’t been independently verified by Meta.
Meta removed only 11% of the illegal gambling ads identified in May and 15% in June, according to the same research. Most of the advertisements were live only briefly, with 76% of those recorded in May and 65% in June gone within a day. Removing ads after they’ve already circulated doesn’t solve anything, the trade body argues, because unlicensed operators simply replace them with fresh campaigns.
Cloaking, Telegram redirects, and pages disguised as fan accounts, entertainment sites, blogs and other unrelated categories all show up in VNLOK’s findings. The number of Facebook pages carrying gambling advertisements in its research jumped from 697 in May to 3,237 in June, which makes page-by-page detection considerably harder as advertisers keep changing identities.
The Netherlands Gambling Authority has independently reported large volumes of illegal gambling advertising on Meta’s platforms. The Kansspelautoriteit submitted more than 4,600 reports about illegal ads on Facebook and Instagram in April alone, and has made advertising by unlicensed operators one of its enforcement priorities for 2026.
Meta has previously said advertisers are required to comply with applicable laws and that it takes enforcement against illegal advertising seriously. The company pulled a number of gambling advertisements and associated accounts after Dutch broadcaster BNR put examples to it in August, while declining to say how much revenue it makes from gambling advertising aimed at Dutch users.
Dutch lawmakers are meanwhile considering giving the KSA direct powers over platforms that keep showing illegal gambling ads after removal requests. A motion submitted on Sept. 23 would make repeated publication after a KSA notification an offence under Dutch gambling law, letting the regulator impose an administrative fine or penalty payment on the platform itself. The proposal went onto the House of Representatives’ Sept. 29 voting agenda.
VNLOK supports that proposal while arguing that regulators shouldn’t sit and wait for new legislation before acting against companies that facilitate illegal gambling. Its case asks the Amsterdam court to settle the question under existing EU rules, on the argument that the sheer volume and persistence of illegal gambling advertising across Facebook and Instagram prove Meta’s current controls fall short of what the DSA requires.