The District Court of Midden-Nederland ruled on September 28, 2026 that the Dutch Data Protection Authority acted unlawfully when, in November 2019, it notified amateur football video platform VoetbalTV of its intention to fine the company, and that the notice drove away the sponsors the business depended on. The court nonetheless rejected VoetbalTV's request for €25,000 in damages, because the company never put the sponsorship paperwork before the judges.

In Short

A Dutch court decided on September 28, 2026 that the country's privacy regulator behaved unlawfully in 2019 when it told VoetbalTV, a service that filmed amateur football matches, that it planned to fine the company on the strength of a legal reading European judges had never supported. The court accepted that this warning scared off the sponsors ING and KPN, which matters to any business whose deals depend on how a regulator describes its use of data. VoetbalTV still gets no damages, because it did not show the court the sponsorship documents needed to prove how much money it missed out on, so only €1,814 in legal costs and a €371 court fee come back.

What the court decided

The judgment, case number UTR 24/6084, published under ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2026:6594, was delivered by a full bench sitting in Utrecht. It splits cleanly in two. On liability, VoetbalTV B.V., the Zeist-based company behind the platform, prevailed on almost every contested point. On the amount owed, it failed completely.

The court found that the regulator's decision of July 16, 2020, which imposed a fine of €575,000, was unlawful. That point was not in dispute: the decision had been annulled years earlier. More significant was the finding that the intentionto enforce, issued by the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP) on November 22, 2019, was itself an unlawful act in preparation for that decision. The court also found a causal connection between the November 2019 notice and the damage VoetbalTV described - the withdrawal of two major sponsors, ING and KPN, and the failure of new football clubs to sign up.

Then the case ran into the evidence. According to the judgment, VoetbalTV "did not substantiate the damage suffered with documentary evidence." Its request was rejected. The AP was ordered to reimburse the €371 court fee and pay €1,814 in legal costs, a combined €2,185 set against a fine that had been more than 260 times larger. The costs order reflects the split verdict: according to the judgment, the company "has been successful on the most fundamental points".

A ceiling, not an estimate

Why €25,000, when VoetbalTV says its losses were larger? A footnote in the judgment supplies the answer. Under Article 8:89 of the Dutch General Administrative Law Act, known as the Awb, that amount is the upper limit for compensation claims brought before the administrative court. The figure is a jurisdictional cap rather than a valuation of what the company lost.

VoetbalTV listed several heads of damage, according to the judgment: loss of revenue, the costs of a forced scaling down of its business, the costs of establishing the damage, and harm to its brand and goodwill. It confined the request to lost income - missed sponsorship money and club contracts that never materialised - and argued that a loss above €25,000 was plainly plausible. The judgment does not say whether the company intends to pursue a larger sum elsewhere.

A platform for 153 clubs

VoetbalTV filmed amateur football matches on behalf of the clubs that played them. At the beginning of 2020, according to the judgment, 153 clubs participated and between 2,500 and 3,000 matches were recorded and broadcast every month. The app had an estimated 520,000 users.

It was as much a social network as a broadcaster. Users could watch match moments, analyse games, collect data and share clips with others, while the company's own editorial team selected highlights such as goals and chances. Trainers and analysts had access to a dedicated analysis tool. Every one of those functions depended on footage of players and spectators, whose privacy became the subject of the regulator's investigation.

Those appearing for the company at the hearing on June 10, 2026 included its director and a chief corporate officer of Talpa, according to the judgment. The KNVB, the Dutch football association, also features in the record: the court relied in part on a joint statement signed by VoetbalTV's former chief executive and the association's former commercial and general manager.

Sixteen months from draft report to bankruptcy

The regulator's investigation into the privacy of players and spectators produced a draft report dated May 15, 2019. After VoetbalTV responded, a final report followed on November 6, 2019, concluding that the company was processing personal data unlawfully. Sixteen days later the AP issued its intention to enforce. VoetbalTV submitted its view on November 29.

Months passed without a decision. On May 20, 2020 the company lodged an appeal against the regulator's failure to decide in time. The fine arrived on July 16, 2020, some 237 days after the intention. Fifty-seven days after that, on September 11, 2020, the District Court of Midden-Nederland declared VoetbalTV bankrupt.

The sequence carries legal weight. The sponsors did not leave after the fine. According to the judgment, the damage VoetbalTV alleged rested on the withdrawal of sponsors in November 2019 and on the failure of new clubs to join afterwards, all of it prompted by the fine report and the intention before any fine decision existed. For that reason the court found no causal link between the alleged damage and the July 2020 decision itself. Liability could only run through the notice.

The doctrine that did not survive

At the centre of the dispute sits a single interpretive choice. According to the judgment, the AP took the view that a legitimate interest has to be an interest designated as a legal interest in legislation or elsewhere in the law, so that VoetbalTV's purely economic interest in the processing "can never be a legitimate interest". On that basis, the regulator found a breach of Article 5(1)(a) of the General Data Protection Regulation and held that the condition in Article 6(1)(f) had not been met.

Article 6(1)(f) is applied in three steps. A legitimate interest must exist. The processing must be necessary to pursue it. And the interest must survive a balancing exercise against the rights of the people whose data is used. The AP stopped at the first step.

That proved fatal to the fine. On November 23, 2020, after the bankruptcy, the District Court of Midden-Nederland annulled the decision, ruling that the review rested on a misinterpretation of the concept and that the regulator had never carried out the necessity test or the balancing test. The court's judgment took the place of the annulled decision. On July 27, 2022 the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State, the highest Dutch administrative court, confirmed that outcome.

Almost two years later, on July 12, 2024, VoetbalTV asked the AP to acknowledge liability. The regulator refused on September 5, 2024, and the company went to court on September 25, 2024.

Why the notice, and not only the fine

The legal route shaped everything that followed. Article 8:88(1) of the Awb allows an administrative court to order a public body to compensate damage caused by an unlawful decision, under subsection (a), or by an unlawful act in preparation for an unlawful decision, under subsection (b). The court said it would align its assessment as closely as possible with compensation law in the Dutch Civil Code.

The AP argued that the case could concern only the fine decision. Asking questions, conducting an investigation and drafting a report formed part of its statutory duties, it said, and fell outside the administrative court's jurisdiction; the unlawfulness of the July 2020 decision did not make the steps that preceded it unlawful.

The court agreed only in part. It found the AP authorised to investigate the processing of match video, a point nobody contested, and saw nothing unlawful in the investigation method or in drawing up a fine report as such. The intention was treated differently. An intention is an act in preparation for a decision, and whether it is unlawful depends on whether the regulator exercised the care that could be required of it given the company's interests known to it, the standard set by Article 6:162(2) of the Civil Code.

It had not, the court concluded. According to the judgment, there were "no starting points for the interpretation used by the AP in the existing (European) case law at the time." The Court of Justice of the European Union had repeatedly confirmed that member states may not exclude in advance, or categorically, the right to rely on legitimate interest for particular categories of processing. The judgment cites the ASNEF ruling of November 24, 2011 in joined cases C-468/10 and C-469/10, and a ruling of December 11, 2019 in case C-708/18. It also cites Opinion 06/2014 of the Article 29 Working Party, the grouping of EU privacy regulators that preceded the European Data Protection Board. The AP's reading matched neither the case law nor that opinion. By failing to interpret the concept in an open and flexible way, the court found, the regulator skipped the tests the law required and did not deal carefully with the company's evident interests.

A lawful regulator, imagined

Unlawfulness alone does not produce compensation. Dutch civil law requires a conditio sine qua non link: the court compares the position the company was in after the unlawful act with the position it would have occupied without it. The burden of proving that link rests with the injured party, and the comparison is made as of the date of the intention.

The two sides imagined very different counterfactuals. VoetbalTV argued that the only lawful alternative was no fine at all, and that a lawful regulator would have left room to adjust the product. The AP argued that a lawful regulator, having accepted a legitimate interest at step one, would still have failed the company at steps two and three and fined it anyway, and that sponsors and investors would have walked away regardless.

The court took a middle course. A fine or an order subject to a penalty might still have followed, it reasoned, but VoetbalTV could have limited the damage by adapting its concept. On necessity, the court assumed the company would probably have passed, because the AP had identified no realistic alternative. "Writing articles or filming coaches are fundamentally different from the product that the applicant had in mind and therefore do not constitute a real alternative to it," the judgment states.

The balancing step, in the court's view, might well have produced conditions rather than a prohibition. It gave three examples: a restriction by region; broadcasting with a delay, so that images could be adjusted; and a higher minimum age, for instance 18. VoetbalTV had always said it was willing to discuss such changes with the regulator, which the court read as evidence that the company wanted to continue.

That distinction decided the causal question. A finding that no legitimate interest existed left no path forward, whereas conditions would have left one open. According to the judgment, "The lack of a legitimate interest has a much more far-reaching scope than the adjustment of the plans would have had." A modified product might have appealed less to some sponsors, the court accepted, but "there is no reason to assume that the sponsors would have dropped out completely."

What does a hypothetical regulator's reasoning have to do with real money? Under Dutch law, a great deal: had the damage under a lawful intention been identical in nature and extent, no causal link would exist. The court found it would not have been identical.

Attribution to the notice

A further test under Article 6:98 of the Civil Code asks whether the loss can reasonably be attributed to the unlawful act. The court held that it could. The intention referred to the final fine report and announced a fine or a penalty order, so VoetbalTV was compelled to inform KPN and ING, with whom it was in extensive negotiations, and both withdrew.

The court had no reason to doubt the joint statement of September 24, 2024 describing that withdrawal, particularly since the former chief executive confirmed it at the hearing. It also accepted that the company stopped connecting new clubs and did not go looking for new sponsorship partners. Given that the AP's position "did not offer any prospect for the applicant to continue VoetbalTV (in a possibly amended form)", the regulator ought to have understood that its notice would lead to damage, according to the judgment.

ING, KPN and the missing contracts

Here the case turned against the company. The AP disputed not only causation but the damage itself. According to the judgment, the regulator pointed out that the file contained no statement from any sponsor saying it had left because of the regulator's conduct, and that it had found no evidence of the agreements supposedly made with ING and KPN as launching partners. A damage assessment memo dated September 12, 2024 was, in its view, insufficient. Lagging growth in member clubs might simply mean the forecasts had been too optimistic.

The court accepted that KPN and ING would have been major sponsors and that they dropped out because of the unlawful intention. It did not accept that the resulting loss had been established. VoetbalTV had submitted the memo but no draft sponsorship contracts, no advertising agreements and no other documents supporting the planned arrangements with the two companies. The joint statement, which the court described as unilateral, did not make clear what concrete sponsorship terms had been agreed. The same gap applied to the income from clubs that never joined.

VoetbalTV had limited its own case. It argued that a loss above €25,000 was sufficiently plausible from the facts alone and said it would provide further substantiation and evidence only if the court disagreed. The court declined that offer on grounds of procedural economy. Hearing the evidence would extend the case considerably, it reasoned, and because VoetbalTV maintains that its losses exceed €25,000 anyway, granting the request would not end the dispute. The judgment adds that, in light of the points decided in the company's favour, the parties can agree on compensation between themselves.

The four million euro argument

One of the AP's arguments went unresolved. According to the judgment, the regulator contended that VoetbalTV is "debt-free as a result of the bankruptcy" and had enjoyed a benefit of four million euros, leaving its financial position considerably improved compared with the period before the alleged unlawful act. Because the court rejected the request for lack of proof, it did not rule on that contention, and the judgment gives no further detail on how the four million euro figure was derived.

What the text leaves open

Either party may appeal to the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State within six weeks of the day the judgment is sent. The English version of the judgment reviewed by PPC Land leaves blank the date on which copies were sent to the parties, so the appeal deadline cannot be calculated from the document alone.

The text contains other irregularities. It names J.J. Catsburg as presiding judge but lists J.W. Wagenaar twice among the members, alongside S.C.A. van Kuijeren. A footnote dates the Article 29 Working Party opinion to "9 April 2-14", although the opinion's own number, 06/2014, places it in 2014. Neither affects the substance of the ruling.

One citation does bear on timing. Of the two Court of Justice rulings relied on to show that the AP's reading lacked support, the second, C-708/18, was handed down on December 11, 2019, nineteen days after the intention was issued and seven months before the fine. The earlier ASNEF ruling and the 2014 opinion both predate the notice by years.

Why this matters for the marketing community

The VoetbalTV judgment is the latest step in the unwinding of a Dutch regulatory position that once treated commercial motives as disqualifying. The AP also fined the Royal Dutch Lawn Tennis Association 525,000 euros over the sale of member data to sponsors. When that dispute reached Luxembourg, the Court of Justice rejected the proposition that a legitimate interest needs a positive legal basis and accepted, in case C-621/22 decided in October 2024, that a purely commercial interest could qualify so long as it is not contrary to law. By January 2025 the regulator had shifted: in a Dutch village livestream case, the AP changed its position on appeal with reference to the tennis ruling and accepted promotional interests as legitimate, although the operator still failed the necessity and balancing tests. The Utrecht judgment does not cite the tennis ruling at all. It measured the 2019 notice against material that existed long before it, which is a harsher standard for the regulator than a finding that the law had simply moved on.

The mechanics of the damage deserve attention from anyone whose revenue runs through sponsors or advertisers. No fine had been imposed when ING and KPN withdrew; a regulator's stated legal position, communicated in a notice, was enough. Almost eight months then passed before any decision was taken. For publishers, measurement vendors and ad tech firms relying on legitimate interest for analytics, audience measurement or direct marketing, the ruling treats the content of an enforcement notice as a commercially consequential act in its own right. The legal basis itself remains contested terrain: an EDPB case digest covering 62 One-Stop-Shop decisions found the balancing test to be where most controllers stumbled.

Enforcement durability is a recurring theme in PPC Land's coverage. Close to 40% of the €7.1 billion in GDPR fines announced since May 2018 had been annulled or was under active challenge by May 2026, and a Luxembourg court annulled Amazon's €746 million fine on March 12, 2026 because the regulator had skipped the fault analysis EU case law requires. VoetbalTV adds a second chapter to that story: an annulled fine can be followed by a finding that the regulator itself acted unlawfully. It also shows how narrow that route is in practice. The administrative court can award no more than €25,000, the company bears the burden of proof, and the only money that changed hands here was €2,185 in costs, nearly seven years after the notice.

The Dutch regulator's enforcement pattern gives each of its notices unusual weight. EDPB statistics showed the Netherlands imposing fines in 0.03% of cases, against 6.84% in Slovakia, while individual Dutch penalties have grown large. The AP fined Uber €290 million in August 2024, Yango's parent €100 million on April 1, 2026, and Uber again, 824,990,000 euros on August 21, 2026, a decision Uber has appealed. Smaller cases move too: a €600,000 penalty on Kruidvat's parent over tracking cookies in July 2024 was later cut to €50,000.

Meanwhile the question at the heart of VoetbalTV, what counts as a legitimate interest and who decides, is being rewritten in Brussels. A Council draft circulated this month would route processing for AI systems through Article 6(1)(f), while German drafting would go further and treat the interest as presumed. Legislators are settling the scope of the concept at the same moment courts are putting a price on getting it wrong.

Timeline

Summary

Who: VoetbalTV B.V., a bankrupt Zeist-based company that filmed and streamed amateur football for 153 clubs, and the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (AP), the Dutch data protection authority. The case was decided by a full bench of the District Court of Midden-Nederland in Utrecht, presided over by J.J. Catsburg.

What: The court held that the AP's November 22, 2019 intention to fine VoetbalTV was an unlawful preparatory act, because it rested on a reading of legitimate interest without support in European case law, and that it caused sponsors ING and KPN to withdraw. It still rejected the €25,000 compensation request because VoetbalTV filed no sponsorship contracts or other documents proving the loss, and ordered the AP to pay €1,814 in legal costs and reimburse the €371 court fee.

When: Judgment was delivered and published on September 28, 2026, after a hearing on June 10, 2026. The underlying events run from the AP's draft report of May 15, 2019 through the €575,000 fine of July 16, 2020 and the bankruptcy of September 11, 2020. Either party may appeal within six weeks of the judgment being sent.

Where: Utrecht, the Netherlands, under Articles 8:88 and 8:89 of the Dutch General Administrative Law Act and the liability provisions of the Dutch Civil Code, with the Council of State as the appeal forum.

Why: The AP treated a purely economic interest as incapable of being legitimate and never ran the necessity and balancing tests. The court found that a lawful notice would more likely have produced conditions, such as regional limits, delayed broadcasting or a minimum age of 18, which VoetbalTV could have absorbed, rather than a verdict that left the product no future.