SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
An unnamed operator offering autoplay has been approached by the Dutch gambling authority, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA).
The operator has been asked to take down the offering with immediate effect, as the feature is currently not allowed under the Netherlands’ gambling framework.
Automatic play enables customers to continue wagering after each placed bet without the need to manually bet again. The KSA highlighted that since the authority views this as a potential precursor of gambling harm, it therefore has forbidden it.
The operator in question was contacted after the KSA received a tip reporting that a punter was able to automatically continue playing an online roulette table after scoring a win, and was not removed from the table.
Since the KSA was notified, it has ordered the operator to take down the autoplay function immediately and review its offering before continuing servicing customers.
In addition, the regulator has also contacted all licensed gambling providers reminding them to ensure that the autoplay function is not included anywhere in their portfolios, as in most cases the gambling software is provided by a third party who might have been unaware of the autoplay restrictions.
Kansspelautoriteit has continued to improve on its player protection policies, most recently using an innovative market analysis approach to map out potential indicators of problem gambling.
As a result, the authority has added several other markers of harmful gambling behaviours besides the loss of large amounts of money, such as the duration of a player’s session, the time of day when the session occurs, the number of deposits made during a session, as well as the type of vertical used (betting vs igaming) and the associated risk levels.
