{"id":3264,"date":"2026-04-17T04:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T04:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/3264\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T04:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T04:12:16","slug":"legal-gambling-stagnates-in-the-netherlands-as-black-market-grows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/3264\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal gambling stagnates in the Netherlands as black market grows"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Netherlands Gaming Authority\u2019s (KSA) spring report has compounded long-term trends of GGR decline within the licensed industry.<\/p>\n

This latest publication covers H2 2025 and shows that, across various metrics, the legal market remained roughly the same size as in H1 2025.<\/p>\n

Stagnation appears to be consistent on the consumer and operator sides, but not on the black market, which continues to swell.<\/p>\n

More accounts, less players and stable operator numbers<\/p>\n

The number of licence holders increased from 30 to 31 between July and December 2025, while the regulator estimates that 810,000 players bet with legal providers in the second half of the year, compared to 850,000 in the first.<\/p>\n

Despite the number of players marginally decreasing, there were nearly 100,000 more active accounts in H2 than H1.<\/p>\n

This indicates that players are spreading their gambling activity across more providers, possibly due to the introduction of net deposit limits in October 2024.<\/p>\n

Gross gaming revenue\u00a0<\/p>\n

This stagnation in licensing and player base has translated into a stable GGR of \u20ac602m in H2, a nominal rise of less than 1% from the H1 report that represents a shrinking of revenue when incorporating inflation.<\/p>\n

Similar statistics across Europe bear out the KSA\u2019s suspicion that domestic factors are chiefly to blame for the lack of growth \u2013 data provided by H2 Gambling Capital shows the licensed online gambling market across the EU growing by 11% from 2024 to 2025.<\/p>\n

For the Netherlands, the plateau is part of a longer-term story of shrinking GGR.<\/p>\n

In the second half of 2024, the legal market generated \u20ac697m, while full-year data for 2024 and 2025 shows an 18% decrease in GGR since then.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When this trend of decline was identified in the previous monitoring report, the KSA attributed it to the new rules introduced in October 2024.<\/p>\n

Channelisation<\/p>\n

The size of the legal market is not something the KSA considers in isolation, and it is relevant also through what it suggests about the illegal market.<\/p>\n

Concerningly, the number of players gambling with black market operators increased during the second semester of 2025.<\/p>\n

In H1, 15,000 people were thought to have engaged with both legal and illegal providers, with 19,000 betting exclusively on the black market.<\/p>\n

Reporting for H2 shows those figures have risen to 20,000 and 30,000, respectively.<\/p>\n

This means that whereas 94% of players were estimated to have wagered exclusively via legal platforms in H1, that figure now sits at 91%.<\/p>\n

However, looking at the channelisation of money being gambled on illegal platforms gives a far more dramatic representation of the size of the black market.<\/p>\n

It is now thought that only 53% of money going through the gambling industry is being wagered with the legal market.<\/p>\n

Last Autumn\u2019s monitoring report initially had this figure at 56%, but a correction amended the estimate to 49%, meaning GGR channelisation has supposedly improved since then.<\/p>\n

The KSA believes that the disparity between player and financial channelisation is due to higher player losses on the black market: \u201cbecause they are less protected there, or even not protected at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Share<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Netherlands Gaming Authority\u2019s (KSA) spring report has compounded long-term trends of GGR decline within the licensed industry.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3327,372,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-3264","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-netherlands","8":"tag-black-market","9":"tag-kansspelautoriteit","10":"tag-netherlands"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}