News surrounding the growing phenomenon of Online gambling has found its way across the North Sea to Holland.

This week it was announced that the country is to be the latest European nation to permit online gambling with researches in the Netherlands studying its meteoric rise in popularity in the United Kingdom before submitting their application to the Government.

Joining its European neighbours, specifically Spain and Great Britain, Holland will now permit online gambling through its licensed land-based Holland Casino.

Running on behalf of the country's government the new website, to be launched in June, will be available to Netherlands residents only.

The Government backed Holland Casino say “ The Dutch Government has decided to place all casino gambling (including online) in the Netherlands in the hands of a single operator, based on the belief that doing so will ensure a fair, legal and well controlled range of gaming opportunities for the public.”

Land Casinos have been legal in the lowlands country since 1974 but restrictions were put in place to limit the amount of land casinos and the legalization of online casinos until now.

Latest figures show that there’s a massive gambling culture in Holland with annual revenues from land casinos in the last six years averaging 120 million euro per annum.

Lewis Rose, president of licensing partner and award winning CryptoLogic, said: "At CryptoLogic, we're focused on strengthening our competitive advantage in Europe, and our new relationship with Holland Casino achieves this nicely."

By adding a government controlled casino operator to our blue-chip roster of customers, we have an excellent template for other governments interested in realizing the benefits of safe, secure and regulated Internet gaming."