Dutch Courts Leave Pre-2021 Casino Losses With Operators

The Dutch Supreme Court held on 3 July 2026 that online bets placed with unlicensed casinos before 1 October 2021 remain valid contracts. Players cannot claw those losses back just because the site lacked a Dutch licence.

That answer undercuts the class actions aimed at Unibet, Bwin and PokerStars, which treated the grey years as a void book that licensed operators would have to unwind.

The Supreme Court Closed the Easy Refund Path

The Hoge Raad said those contracts are not void under article 3:40 of the Civil Code, and that they are not voidable on that ground either. In the 3 July 2026 preliminary ruling it answered questions from the Amsterdam and North Holland district courts, which had split from other benches that had already ordered payouts.

The file numbers are 25/00202 and 25/00204, published as ECLI:NL:HR:2026:1159. Advocate-General Siewert Lindenbergh had given the same advice on 28 November 2025, and the court followed it. The Betting and Gaming Act bans offering games of chance without a licence, the judges said, but the act’s text and structure do not show that the ban was meant to wipe out the private contract between player and operator.

The court added that Dutch gambling law has never been a total ban. Lotteries, sports bets and land-based casinos already ran under licences, and a remote licence simply did not exist until the Remote Gambling Act. Because the content of a bet need not change with the operator’s licence status, the missing permit does not make the deal contrary to public order or good morals.

Two live files sat behind the questions. One player said he lost $139,464.58 on PokerStars, operated by Malta-based TSG Interactive Gaming Europe Ltd, between 2006 and 2021. The other said he lost €135,137 on PartyCasino, operated by ElectraWorks Europe Ltd, also in Malta, between August 2020 and July 2021. Both asked the district courts to treat those contracts as void so the net losses would come back as money paid without a legal basis.

The Hoge Raad sent the cases back for the district courts to finish under the new rule. Hundreds of other pending suits and the mass claims announced since 2024 now have to live with the same answer, at least where they rest only on a missing licence.

How the Mass Claims Were Built

The volume product was simple. If every unlicensed bet was a nullity, a claim vehicle could collect thousands of transaction histories, add up the net losses, and send one bill. Lawyer Benzi Loonstein had already won individual files on that theory. Gokverliesterug, Finch Dispute Resolution, Stichting Aequitas and Dynamiet Nederland tried to industrialise it.

THE CLAIM VEHICLES

• Loonstein files: The Amsterdam lawyer won early district-court payouts and, by September 2024, his office said more than 20,000 people had signed up for a related mass claim later parked with Stichting Aequitas on kansspelclaim.nl.
• Gokverliesterug: The limited partnership OG MA 1 C.V. was founded on 5 August 2024 to finance and run claims against unlicensed operators; Finch lawyers Koen Rutten, Lars Boersma and Job Staal act for it, and it takes 36 percent of recovered losses, including VAT, only if money comes back.
• Dynamiet Nederland: A third Dutch vehicle followed the 2024 announcements and joined the queue of mass files aimed at the same pre-licence years.

Gokverliesterug named Unibet, Bwin, PokerStars and Bet365 when it went public on 25 September 2024. Bet365 said it was not active in the Netherlands before the licensed market opened. Rutten said many foreign online casinos had ignored the Dutch rules for a long time, and that they had to answer for that period even if they now held licences. He also said a litigation funder gave the group enough heft to go as far as the European Court if needed.

The data fight showed the model’s other bottleneck. On 7 July 2025 the Amsterdam preliminary-relief judge declared Gokverliesterug inadmissible in a group demand for Unibet player histories, holding that the vehicle did not meet the strict GDPR test for bringing privacy claims for other people. Twenty-three players had given it an irrevocable collection mandate. Kindred Group companies and Risepoint Limited each received a costs award of €2,553, plus €92 in lawyer’s salary if the judgment had to be served. Without those histories, a mass file cannot prove the losses it wants to add up.

Overijssel Paid Out Hundreds of Thousands First

District courts had already paid real money on the theory the Hoge Raad has now rejected. Rechtbank Overijssel, on 17 April 2024, ordered Bwin to return €187,622 plus interest and PokerStars to return $230,705, after finding the gambling contracts void because neither firm held a Dutch licence in the years at issue. Loonstein, who acted for those players, called the pair of judgments groundbreaking at the time and said they would open the door to many more cases.

A later 2024 Overijssel file against Unibet, then run by Trannel International Limited inside Kindred Group, produced a still larger number: one player recovered €676,224.76. By 28 November 2025 Loonstein said he had won 19 of 20 cases he had taken to judgment and that most of those clients had already received their money, including one recovery of 700,000 euros. Those paid files are not the same as the two test cases the Hoge Raad was asked to frame, and the Supreme Court did not order anyone to send that money back.

THE RULINGS THAT SET THE STAKES

New claims copied from the Overijssel shortcut now fail at the first step. Pending files that pleaded only nullity have to be recast, settled, or dropped. Operators that already paid under an enforceable 2024 judgment still have those judgments unless they win a separate appeal; the Hoge Raad was answering questions of law, not retrying those invoices.

Entain, Unibet and PokerStars Keep the Old Stakes

The winners sit on the operator side of the 2024 caption. Entain’s Bwin, PartyCasino and PartyPoker brands had argued all along that a missing Dutch licence did not unwind the bets. Kindred’s Unibet, now inside FDJ United, had the same exposure on the grey years and a separate Dutch-facing site, unibet.nl, run with a licence by Optdeck since June 2022. PokerStars, through TSG Interactive Gaming Europe Ltd, was one of the two names in the Supreme Court test file.

Bwin, PartyCasino and PartyPoker welcome the Supreme Court’s ruling. It confirms the position they have consistently maintained, which is that gambling agreements entered into before 1 October 2021 are valid, and that any historic gambling losses incurred cannot be recovered on the basis that those agreements were void.

Entain spokesperson, statement on the 3 July 2026 ruling

That is the civil-law clean-up the grey-market brands wanted when they later bought Dutch licences. Administrative fines and Ksa enforcement still attach to unlicensed offer, and they always did. The private-law question was whether every Dutch customer could reverse the ledger. The Hoge Raad said no.

Loonstein called the outcome disappointing and surprising, and pointed out that the highest courts in Germany and Austria treat similar contracts with illegal operators as invalid. He said his office would study the judgment before deciding the next step, and that other legal grounds might still be available. Gokverliesterug’s own site had already warned that a negative Supreme Court answer could lead it to end the collective action.

German Courts Still Grant Player Refunds

The Dutch result diverges from the German and Austrian books that the 2024 claim vehicles wanted to copy. German district and higher regional courts have kept ordering unlicensed online casino operators to return net losses, including a 7 May 2026 Münster judgment that told the Malta company behind 888casino, 888sport and 888poker to repay €11,603.50 from play in 2016 and 2017, and a 1 October 2025 Munich higher-regional ruling that left in place an €8,381.92 order against Tipico Games Limited.

The German Federal Court of Justice heard two of those files on 17 September 2026 and listed 28 January 2027 for judgment. In the hearing the court indicated that online games offered without the German licence required by the Interstate Treaty can still carry civil consequences, including a player’s claim to recover stakes. That is the opposite direction from The Hague, and it is not a final German result until the January judgment lands.

The Court of Justice of the EU, in case C-440/23 on 16 April 2026, held that EU law does not stop Germany treating unlicensed online casino contracts as void, and does not make a player’s restitution claim an abuse of Union law merely because the operator holds a Malta licence. Austrian Supreme Court case law still treats gambling contracts with operators that lack an Austrian concession as null, with a 30-year limitation period, though at least one Austrian file also forced a player to return winnings because a void contract unwinds both ways.

Dutch mass claims that sold themselves as the local version of those German and Austrian runs now have to explain why the same missing-licence story produces a refund in Munich and not in Amsterdam.

What Players Can Still Argue in Court

The Hoge Raad left the door open, and then narrowed it. A missing licence, standing alone, is not enough. A player who can show a defect in consent, or an unlawful act with a causal link to the loss, still has a claim, and that claim has to be proved on the facts of that account.

WHAT THE COURT LEFT OPEN

• Mistake: A player who can show he would not have bet had he known a material fact may still ask to set the contract aside, which is a different attack from saying the whole market was void.
• Unlawful act: Offering games in breach of the ban can still be a tort, and in that frame a player might seek more than the lost stake, including consequential loss, if the facts support it.
• Duty of care and unfair practices: Pushing a customer past his own limits, or using commercial practices the law treats as unfair, remains a fact-specific route, including for people who later joined Cruks once the licensed market existed.

Those routes do not scale the way nullity did. A claim vehicle that takes 36 percent of recoveries needs thousands of similar files. Tort and mistake files need medical records, account logs, bonus trails and evidence of how a particular site treated a particular customer. Gokverliesterug already lost the group attempt to force Unibet to hand over those logs. Licensed operators also now run Cruks checks and affordability tools that did not exist on the grey sites, which cuts the other way for post-2021 play and leaves the pre-licence years as a messier factual fight.

Ksa-licensed sites must check the Central Register for Exclusion from Gambling before they admit a player, log play against the limits the customer set, and keep a control database the regulator can read. None of that machinery ran on the unlicensed sites. It still does not, by itself, unwind the old bets.

Renewal Arrives Without a Mass Civil Bill

The Remote Gambling Act act took force on 1 April 2021, and operators could apply from that date. The Kansspelautoriteit opened legal play from 1 October 2021 for sites with its licence, issuing the first 10 permits together so no one got a head start. Those first licences reach the five-year mark on 1 October 2026.

THE GREY YEARS TO THE RULING

1. 1 April 2021: The Remote Gambling Act takes force and operators may file for a Ksa licence.
2. 1 October 2021: The licensed online market opens with the first 10 permits, Cruks checks, and higher fines for sites that stay unlicensed.
3. 17 April 2024: Rechtbank Overijssel orders Bwin to repay €187,622 and PokerStars to repay $230,705 on a void-contract theory.
4. 25 September 2024: Gokverliesterug launches its class action against licensed brands for the unlicensed years, after Loonstein’s office has already signed up more than 20,000 people.
5. 22 January 2025: Amsterdam and North Holland send the prejudicial questions to the Hoge Raad.
6. 7 July 2025: Amsterdam throws out Gokverliesterug’s group data claim against Kindred and Risepoint.
7. 28 November 2025: Advocate-General Lindenbergh advises that unlicensed contracts are not void.
8. 3 July 2026: The Hoge Raad follows that advice and rejects automatic refunds.

Operators who took Dutch customers through the unlicensed years, then paid for a Ksa permit, will now sit their renewal files without a single mass civil invoice for those years. Players who still want money back have to prove something more than a missing licence, one account at a time, while German benches keep writing the refund orders the Dutch Supreme Court would not.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on court decisions, claim vehicles and company statements, and it is informational only. It does not constitute legal advice, and it is not a recommendation to join, fund, defend or abandon any claim for gambling losses. Readers who think they have a claim or a defence should consult a lawyer admitted in the relevant country before acting on any file, deadline or recovery pitch. Figures, case names and claim-vehicle terms reflect the court texts and public statements cited here, and later judgments or settlements can change them.