Get exclusive CAP network offers from top brands

View CAP Offers

Holland Casino Loses Vote

The upper house of the Dutch Parliament has defeated a bill that would have seen State-owned monopoly Holland Casino open an online casino on a trial basis.

According to the Dutch Senate's website, the bill to open the test online casino at HollandCasino.com was narrowly defeated by a vote of 35 to 37 on Tuesday after the lower house approved the bill in 2006. The verdict suggests Dutch legislators are taking a more cautious approach aware of earlier scrutiny by the European Commission. In February, the European Commission issued Greece and The Netherlands with final warnings before court action over restrictions in their gaming markets in a push by the European Union to boost competition.

Online giants such as PartyGaming, Bwin and Sportingbet would have suffered if the plans had been approved with Dutch gamblers able to bet legally on the new site as opposed to going to other sites based outside Holland.

Holland Casino had been working on a revamp with turnkey provider CryptoLogic in order to develop the site and it is not yet clear how this will affect the Internet operations of the operator.