THE HAGUE, WILLEMSTAD – The Dutch Gambling Authority says it estimated that Curaçao-based Novatech Solutions N.V. generated more than €1.5 billion in turnover from the Dutch market in 2024, a figure that played a central role in calculating the company’s fine.
According to the sanction decision, the regulator was unable to obtain turnover data directly from Novatech after requesting the information in October 2025. Because the company did not provide the requested figures, the Dutch authority said it relied on its so-called search-volume method to estimate the company’s Dutch gambling revenue.
Using that method, the regulator estimated a gross gaming result of €79.7 million in the Netherlands in 2024 from the websites qbet.com and 55bet.com. Based on the formula used by the authority, that amount was then translated into an estimated turnover of €1.594 billion.
On that basis, and taking aggravating factors into account, the authority calculated a fine of 6.5 percent of the estimated Dutch turnover, which came to more than €103.6 million.
However, Dutch law places a maximum limit on such fines. The authority said the penalty may not exceed 10 percent of the company’s net annual turnover in the preceding financial year. For online gambling cases, the regulator uses global gross gaming result as the relevant benchmark.
The Dutch authority estimated Novatech’s worldwide gross gaming result for 2024 at €248.466 million. Because the initially calculated fine exceeded the legal maximum, the regulator reduced the amount to €24.846 million.
The authority said it did not consider a lower fine appropriate, given what it described as the scale of the illegal offer and the financial benefit Novatech is estimated to have obtained from the Dutch market.
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