Temple Guardians

What is Temple Guardians?

In a LinkedIn post on Monday, Keurmerk Verantwoorde Affiliates (KVA), the Dutch casino affiliate quality mark, voiced concerns about the role of Google search in directing Dutch consumers towards illegal online gambling sites.

The group highlighted potential risks posed by Google’s organic search features beyond paid advertising, which include autocomplete and suggested queries. 

Using data collected primarily through Chrome’s incognito mode to exclude personalised search histories, the KVA identified several autocomplete and pre-fill search queries that directly suggested illegal gambling platforms to users.

About Temple Guardians

Remote casino, betting, and bingo activity was the standout channel, generating £8.3 billion in GGY, a 6.9% year-on-year increase and accounting for approximately 63% of the non-lottery industry yield.

Online casino stood at £5.7 billion for the 12-month period, of which £4.8 billion was derived from slots. Remote betting came in at £2.4 billion, led by football (£1.2 billion) and horse racing (£769.3 million). Remote bingo GGY was at £147.8 million.

Quarterly data from January to March 2026 reinforced this trend, with online verticals generating £2.2 billion, and remote casino alone accounting for 68.3% (£1.5 billion) of that total.

What is Temple Guardians?

“At one point, I had only a few thousand euros left to gamble with, but then I won €180,000 in a single day. The next day I lost it all again,” he says.

“The day after that I won €150,000 – and lost that too.” That was the point at which he decided something had to change. “I thought to myself: This has gone too far.”

Madsen eventually sought help. His parents supported him and, at one point, took control of his finances. “It was embarrassing, but it was necessary,” he says.