PokerStars and Bwin ordered to repay more than €400,000 player losses

In a remarkable ruling that could have implications for thousands of online poker players, both PokerStars and Bwin have been ordered to refund losing players in the Netherlands.

This week’s Dutch court ruling found that the two online gaming companies had been illegally offering games from 2006 to 2021 and therefore the €hundreds of thousands lost by two gamblers were null and void.

According to reports in De Telegraaf newspaper, a man from Almelo lost €217,000 on PokerStars, across a mix of poker, casino games and sportsbetting.

In a separate case, a man from Staphorst lost €187,000 on Bwin in the period 2018/2019. Neither company had a licence to offer the games in the Netherlands until 2021.

Unfortunately for PokerStars, Judge Evelien Rozeboon at the District Court of Overijsell rejected their arguments – which included that the players lost money only to other players at poker, not the company – and sided with the unnamed gambler.

Agreements “Null and Void”

The court concluded that: “…the gaming agreement between [the plaintiff] and PokerStars is null and void and that PokerStars is obliged to compensate the loss suffered by [the plaintiff] by way of undoing the loss.”

“This leads to a payment obligation from PokerStars to [claimant] in the amount of 230,705.22 USD and 400 EURO.”

A similar finding was released in the Bwin case, with the gambler in question again anonymous, as per Dutch law.

Judge Rozeboon revealed that the amount lost in the Bwin case was disputed but was settled at “an amount of € 187,621.96. This amount will therefore be allocated.”

Both companies were found liable for legal costs.

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Online Gambling Dangers

Lawyer Benzi Loonstein, acting for the men who raised the claims, told De Telegraaf: “We have been working intensively on this for a year and a half now. The gambling companies have blatantly ignored their duty of care.”

Loonstein explained: “They can be reached by people 24/7, while they do not see the damage that is being done. I assist clients who, in the space of a few days, have gambled away the inheritance of their deceased parents or whose savings account is gone, which was intended for their old age. Such stories are very harrowing. These are situations that the gambling companies don’t care about.”

Of the repayment ruling, he stated the gambling companies “have to compensate for what they have taken away from those who have been tempted to play these online gambling games.”

The lawyer says he has dozens of other clients looking to bring similar cases against major companies in the Dutch gambling market.

Neither PokerStars nor Bwin have commented publicly on what Loonstein claimed were “groundbreaking” rulings.