Treasure Island

How to play Treasure Island

However the sentiment towards the Holland Casino brand has remained quite positive, while more generally the sentiment towards gambling is very critical.

“People look primarily at the instances where things go wrong for players; of course, every single one of those is one too many. But they don’t tend to look at the large number of people enjoying gambling.”

Holland Casino was one of the first operators out of the gate when the newly-minted market opened in 2021, and while they don’t have the position they occupied in those early days, the company’s online offering is healthy. When they launched online, Petra says “we were very well known for – and are very well known for – responsible gaming.

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In any event, successive regulatory tightening and tax increases have already created a “reasonably effective deterrent” to market entry.

There is a second complication. The relentless flow of Commission statements may eventually make enforcement less damaging rather than more.

“The regulatory failures are unhelpful but perhaps the sheer number and regularity of them has made them less remarkable, such that they become ‘wallpaper’,” Waugh says.

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That distinction also informs his view of the wider battle. Asked whether illegal gambling can actually be defeated, his answer is: “No, but you can make it very difficult for them.”

The objective, he argues, is to make it harder for operators to simply replace a blocked domain with another one. “If they knew there was a tool that would find those new sites as well, they might become more cautious.”

It is a philosophy that sits within a broader shift in the industry’s approach to the illegal market. Domain blocking remains important, but regulators are increasingly looking at payments, advertising, affiliate and acquisition channels and cooperation across jurisdictions.