When the channelization rate fell below 50% and illegal gambling revenue surpassed the legal market for the first time, the Dutch Gambling Authority realized that the old tactic of blocking sites one by one was no longer effective. In the newly released 2025 annual report, KSA officially unveiled Project Disconnect—a systematic infrastructure attack plan ranging from search engine advertising and domain name registration to game content supply. KSA Chairman Michel Grothusen put it bluntly: Instead of chasing after each reincarnated small website, it is better to directly cut off the utilities that support their operation. Early results are already on the table: since August 2025, paid search ads for illegal gambling sites on Google have been nearly wiped out; through cooperation with the domain name registry SIDN, a batch of .nl domain names were directly taken down; after the B2B closed-door meeting in November 2025, major game suppliers promised to implement geographical content blocking on unlicensed platforms. This approach is no longer about piecemeal shutdowns, but aims to wither illegal platforms from the root.
From chasing websites to cutting off utilities, the tactical logic has completely turned a new page
In the past, KSA's enforcement path heavily relied on identifying, investigating, and taking down individual sites, but illegal operators responded with simple and crude strategies—changing domain names when blocked, relocating servers when shut down, and endlessly creating new operational fronts. The core logic of Project Disconnect lies in breaking out of the endless cat-and-mouse game and instead attacking the basic service layer that illegal gambling depends on. This shift was triggered by a clear background: in 2025, the volume of illegal gambling reports surged by 34% year-on-year to 2005 cases, and although deposit limits and advertising bans protected individual player safety, they pushed the overall market underground.
KSA has targeted its crackdown on four dimensions. On the search engine front, Google has cooperated in cleaning up illegal gambling paid ads, cutting off the most direct customer acquisition entrance. On the domain front, cooperation with the Dutch domain name management agency SIDN has enabled interception of illegal .nl domains at the registration stage, along with rapid take-down of already online non-compliant domains. On the content supply front, leading game suppliers like Evolution and Playtech, after last November's B2B meeting, explicitly promised to implement geographical content blocking on known unlicensed platforms, meaning that illegal platforms, even if they set up website frameworks, cannot access attractive game content. On the payment front, KSA is negotiating with the Dutch Central Bank and major payment institutions to set up monitoring nodes in the capital flow segment.
Google ad wipeout is just the beginning, domain and content blocking form the second line of defense
The most intuitive early results of Project Disconnect come from the search engine front. Since August 2025, paid ads related to illegal gambling on Google search pages within the Netherlands have virtually disappeared. For illegal platforms highly dependent on search traffic, this is equivalent to cutting off a core customer acquisition artery. Progress on the domain front is also noteworthy. SIDN, as the .nl domain's registration management agency, has been able to intercept known illegal operators at the domain application stage, and cooperate in the rapid take-down of already online non-compliant domains. The cooperation of game suppliers forms the third line of defense from the supply end. When leading content providers proactively implement geographical blocking on unlicensed platforms, illegal platforms, even if they resolve domain and server issues, struggle to provide a gaming experience comparable to the legal market. As industry insiders say, a casino website that is just a shell without content cannot attract repeat customers.
PASA official website continues to track innovative enforcement dynamics in European gambling regulation, noting that the Dutch Project Disconnect model is providing a reference template for EU member states. When the enforcement power of a single jurisdiction faces offshore platforms across borders, shifting the focus of attack from operators to basic infrastructure service providers—search engines, domain registrars, game suppliers, payment channels—amounts to leveraging limited regulatory resources to move a larger market purification lever. Of course, whether this approach can continue to be effective depends on two major variables: one is whether global platforms like Google can internalize the compliance standards of the Dutch market as a long-term policy, rather than a one-time cooperation; the second is how long game suppliers can walk the tightrope between commercial interests and compliance risks. Project Disconnect's first phase answer sheet has been submitted, and the real test of its mettle is whether illegal platforms can find new survival gaps after being cut off from water and electricity.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
Original deep channel for gambling: https://t.me/gamblingdeep
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PASA Matrix: @pasa002_bot
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