Dutch News

Dutch Senate Delivers a Bad Beat to Holland Casino

Everything seemed set and ready to go on April 1. The software for Holland Casino online was already in place, waiting for the green light, the parliament had already approved the new gambling bill more than a year ago, and justice minister Ernst Hirsch-Ballin had postponed the voting in the Senate for another two months to have more time for a solid lobby. This was going to be a mere formality … or was it?

So, what was this about? As we reported before, the justice department, headed by Ernst Hirsch-Ballin, proposed a drastic revision of the outdated Dutch law on gambling. The offline market in Holland has always been controlled by government-owned casinos, lotteries, and sports betting, which allowed them to have their police raids on innocent, yet illegal, poker and bingo nights. But with the huge growth in popularity of Internet gambling and poker, something needed to be changed … fast.

An "independent" investigation concluded in September 2006 that with an estimated 400,000 Dutch online gamblers, there was significantly more than €200 million in yearly revenue going to the online casinos and poker rooms, from which the Dutch government could receive nothing in profits and taxes.

All of a sudden, the news papers were flooded with articles reporting that clinics saw huge growths in gambling addicts, that crime syndicates were hosting illegal poker tournaments, which were putting innocent young people in danger of hijackings and robberies, and that the hundreds of online casinos did nothing to prevent minors from wagering real money on their tables, sending them straight to a life in the gutter.

This was meant to win over the court of public opinion, which it did to some extent, to pave the way for the new law that was proposed and approved by parliament shortly after.

Holland Casino was to have its own online casino, for which the same rules should apply as for the offline market, meaning that Dutch citizens were not allowed to play anywhere else. All major online casinos and poker sites received threats that they should stop accepting Dutch players, and credit card companies and banks were told not to facilitate transactions between their Dutch clients and online gambling sites anymore, or else they would face a serious law suit.

These companies did nothing but laugh at this, of course, because they knew that in order to get something done, the Dutch government had to settle this in a European court, and the fact was that they had "Europe" on their side.

European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Charlie McCreevy had already sent out several letters to Hirsch-Ballin, demanding an explanation for the skewed Dutch policy on gambling, in which Holland Casino and the state lotteries try to combine a reduction of gambling addiction with a multi-million euro advertising budget. To date, McCreevy still hasn't received a satisfying answer.

In order to strengthen the position of the state-owned gambling, the gambling tax was also to be raised from 27 percent to more than 40 percent, to make it virtually impossible for any other gaming company to even try to enter the Dutch market, should the state monopoly come to an end, and to prevent the players to go play abroad. Holland Casino pays the tax on the gamblers' winnings, so any amount won on their tables is tax free for the Dutch players. Naturally, since Holland Casino is owned by the government, it makes no difference to them, but other companies will not be so lucky.

So there we were on the first day of April. The parties that approved the new law in parliament didn't have a significant majority in the Senate, so a lot had to be done to win the votes of the small fractions, whose couple of seats would make the difference. Hirsch-Ballin had already postponed the vote on Feb. 4, and gave himself two months time to win the remaining votes.

Holland Casino also tried to do their part and sent out a letter to the senators the day before, begging for their votes. Of course, senators aren't likely to be as gullible as the rest of the country, so the arguments put forward in this letter probably did their cause more harm than good.

Then came the vote. Poker players across the country were tuned in to the live audio broadcast, and counted with fear and anticipation: 35 times "Aye," 37 times "Nay" … phew.

A couple of hundred thousand sighs of relief were heard across the country. This was probably the most important coin flip that Dutch poker players had to endure, and fortunately, our hand held up.

The three senators whose seats were empty during the vote could have easily turned it the other way. Luckily they had something better to do that day.

In a press release following the vote, Holland Casino declared that they were extremely disappointed in the outcome. With nothing better to say, they just repeated the arguments we have heard many times before, that they would have offered the only legal and trustworthy platform for Internet gambling, actively monitoring gambling addiction along the way, and more nonsense along those lines.
In the final paragraph, however, we read something that we hadn't read before, but knew all along: "With this decision, the many tens of millions in profit and gaming tax will also remain outside of the Dutch treasury."

Who knows, maybe honesty will be part of their new strategy. Let's see if it works when Hirsch-Ballin will make his next proposal, which will be expected sometime this summer.

Peter Dalhuijsen is a professional poker player who writes for pokercollege.nl.