Dutch online gambling opening pushed back to 2021

If you live in the Netherlands and would like to engage in some legal, regulated online gambling, you’re going to have to wait until 2021 to start rolling those electronic dice and spinning those electronic slot wheels.
If you’re an online gambling operator who’s looking to serve the legal market in the Netherlands, you’ll still need to wait until 2021, but you’re going to have to fill out a form expressing your interest in the market before June 21 of this year.
That’s the official word on the state of online gambling in the Netherlands from the country’s chief gambling regulator, René Jansen, chairman of the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA). Jansen went on to state that he’s targeted January 1, 2021 as the earliest possible opening date because the Dutch Remote Gambling Act won’t officially become standing law until the summer of 2020.
That said, Jansen told a crowd of online gambling professional at the Gaming in Holland Conference earlier this week that any operator looking to snare a coveted Dutch online gambling license that they should fill out a form expressing that interest by June 21, 2019. Jansen says that the early deadline for expressing interest is because the KSA is likely to receive a lot more applications than they expect. He went on to state that when Sweden’s market opened, regulators only expected to receive 60 applications and were then swamped with more than 120 applications, according to a report on CalvinAyre.com.
All told, Jansen is enthusiastic about the prospects of opening the Dutch online gambling market to qualified operators by the January 1, 2021 deadline.