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What is Wild Trucks?
Thanks to the “rapid growth of crypto currencies” and globally recognisable branding through marketing and sponsorships, this handful of operators are generating the majority of illegal gambling traffic across Europe.
The report also cites brands targeting a specifically banned vertical or product within a jurisdiction as driving black market activity. While markets across Europe have many examples, one such flagged in the report is that iGaming remains illegal for licensed operators in France.
“The largest black market operators have scaled to create recognisable brands with traffic that can compare to domestically licensed operators,” the report’s authors wrote. “The top group of sites by common owner has a 12% share of traffic, while the largest single brand has 10%.”
About Wild Trucks
In a written response published in January 2026, Arno Rutte, the state secretary at the time acknowledged that enforcement against such sites remained limited, particularly for domains not registered under the .nl extension.
According to KVA, KT van Bruggen, the current state secretary for Justice and Security, has pointed out the urgency of implementing effective countermeasures to limit access to such illegal platforms.
Last week a committee made up of MPs from across the Netherlands’ political spectrum also raised concerns around the role of Meta and Google in supporting the black market.
About Wild Trucks
“I sometimes wish regulators would look at other cases,” he adds. “I mean, what happened in Germany, what’s happening in the UK.”
This risk is particularly apparent when many offshore operators are established brands rather than unknown entities.
“It’s not a dark alley,” he continues. “It’s a large operator that’s regulated in other places, so it’s not the risk for the player that sometimes is implied.”
