Dutch Gambling Market Stalls While Black Market Fills the Gap

The Dutch gambling market is stuck. New data from the Netherlands Gaming Authority, known as the KSA, shows that the legal online sector generated €602 million in gross gaming revenue during the second half of 2025. That sounds stable until you consider what is happening around it. The number of players on licensed platforms keeps falling, illegal operators are picking up the difference, and the regulator is openly concerned about where things are heading.

This is not a market in crisis, but it is a market that has stopped working as intended.

Fewer Players, More Accounts

The player numbers tell a story that raw revenue figures hide. Around 810,000 players were active on licensed platforms in H2 2025, down from 850,000 in the first half of the year. At the same time, the total number of active accounts grew by nearly 100,000 over the same period.

The gap between those two figures points to one thing: players are spreading their activity across multiple operators rather than concentrating with one. The introduction of net deposit limits in October 2024 is a likely driver. Those limits capped how much a player could deposit per account without disclosing detailed financial information. Spreading across accounts became a workaround. The result is a market that looks broader on paper but has actually contracted in real terms.

Average losses per player climbed slightly too, from €117 in H1 2025 to €124 by the end of the year. Players who stayed in the legal market spent a little more. There were just fewer of them.

The Black Market Is Growing

The more serious concern in the KSA report is what is happening outside the licensed market. In H1 2025, roughly 94% of Dutch online gamblers were using legal platforms. By H2 2025, that figure had dropped to 91%. The shift looks small in percentage terms, but it represents a meaningful shift in absolute numbers. An estimated 30,000 players were gambling exclusively on illegal platforms in the second half of the year, a significant jump from the previous period.

Channelisation, the share of total gambling money flowing through licensed operators, also dropped. It fell from 56% in H1 2025 to 53% in H2, according to NEXT.io data cited in the report. That means nearly half of all gambling activity in the Netherlands is now taking place outside the regulated system, where there are no deposit protections, no self-exclusion tools, and no consumer recourse.

The irony is direct. Regulations designed to make gambling safer in the licensed market are pushing a growing number of players toward an environment with no protections at all.

Young Adults Remain a Concern

The KSA also flagged the continued high engagement of young adults in online gambling. Players between the ages of 18 and 24 account for 22% of all gambling accounts in the Netherlands, despite making up just 9.3% of the adult population. Young adults tend to lose less per session than older players, but their overrepresentation in the data is a consistent concern for the regulator.

The KSA has been clear that protecting young and vulnerable players is a priority, particularly given the evidence that younger brains are more susceptible to impulsive behaviour and habit formation. That concern sits awkwardly alongside the black market data. If those same young adults are among the players drifting toward unlicensed sites, the protective framework around them disappears entirely.

The Regulator’s Dilemma

KSA Chairman Michel Groothuizen addressed the question of what comes next directly. There is political enthusiasm in the Netherlands for introducing a single deposit limit that applies across all licensed operators, rather than the current per-account model. Groothuizen’s response was cautious. A cross-provider limit would add friction for players in the legal market, but it would not stop those players from moving to unlicensed alternatives where no such limits exist.

His point cuts to the heart of the problem facing the Dutch gambling market. Every restriction that makes the legal market less convenient also makes the illegal market comparatively more attractive. The KSA faces the difficult task of maintaining meaningful player protections without creating the conditions that accelerate black market growth.

Enforcement remains part of the strategy. The KSA has targeted illegal operators, their payment providers, and their marketing partners as part of its 2026 supervisory agenda. But unlicensed sites operating from outside the Netherlands are difficult to eliminate, and new ones continue to appear.

What the Numbers Actually Mean

The Spring 2026 report paints a picture of a regulated market that has stabilised in revenue terms but is losing ground in every other direction. Player numbers are down. The black market share is up. Channelisation is falling. The deposit limit policy, while reasonable in intent, appears to have accelerated a shift that regulators are now scrambling to contain.

The Dutch gambling market opened in 2021 with the goal of channelling players into a safe, licensed environment. Five years in, less than half of all gambling money is flowing through that environment. The legal sector is not collapsing, but it is ceding ground steadily. How regulators respond over the next 12 months will determine whether that trend reverses or continues.