Dutch licensed share climbs as accounts multiply

• Licensed online GGR rises 11% to €670m in the first half of 2026.
• Estimated revenue-based channelisation improves from 54% to 59%.
• Active accounts average 1.48m as monthly players slip to 490,000.

The Netherlands’ licensed online gambling market generated €670 million in gross gaming revenue in the first half of 2026, according to the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA).

Its latest monitoring report, published on 29 October, shows legal operators clawing back ground from the unlicensed market, with their estimated share of online spend rising to 59%.

World Cup bump

Revenue climbed about 11% from €602 million in the second half of 2025. That lifts the licensed market to roughly €110 million a month. The KSA pointed to the men’s FIFA World Cup, which kicked off in June, as a likely contributor.

The tournament shows up most clearly in the betting line. Sports betting generated around €163 million, taking its share of GGR from 20% to 24%. Casino games against the house still did the heavy lifting at roughly €492 million, or 73% of the total.

New account openings spiked in June too. Operators signed up 563,000 accounts over the six months, up from 529,000 in the previous half.

There were 31 licence holders in June, 28 of them live. The KSA noted that licences are regularly amended to add sports betting, most recently with Hard Rock’s licence in October.

One player, many logins

Active accounts averaged 1.48 million a month, up from 1.38 million. The number of people behind them went the other way. The KSA estimates 490,000 people gambled in an average month, down from about 510,000. Some 820,000 used a licensed site at least once in the half-year.

The regulator’s working theory is limit-dodging. Net deposit limits introduced in October 2024 apply per account, so a player with several accounts gets several limits. The KSA said the account growth may point to people trying to sidestep those caps.

Its GfK panel data muddies the picture. Players visited an average of 3.1 licensed operators, down from 3.3, and 61% used just one. The KSA acknowledged this conflicts with account figures drawn from licensee returns.

Spain is taking a different design route. Its regulator is introducing a cross-operator deposit cap, with licensed operators required to connect by March 2027.

Big losses, fewer hands

Per account, monthly losses edged up from €73 to €75. Per person, the shift was sharper. The KSA estimates the average player lost €137 a month, up 13% from €121, though it stressed the figure is an estimate. In the first half of 2024, before the new duty-of-care rules, it stood at €160.

The heaviest losses sit with a small group. Just 0.5% of accounts lost more than €1,000 a month. They generated 13% of GGR, a share that has been shrinking since October 2024. Most revenue now comes from accounts losing between €100 and €1,000.

Young adults remain a pressure point. People aged 18 to 23 held 22% of active accounts, despite making up 9.2% of the adult population. They lost €68 million in the half-year, or 10.1% of GGR.

The group also leans harder towards sport. Betting accounts for 34% of their losses, compared with 23% for older players.

Illegal play costs more

Measured by players, channelisation stays high at 94% to 97%, depending on how mixed users are counted. Each month, about 480,000 people gambled only with licensed sites. Around 20,000 used only unlicensed operators, and 10,000 played on both.

The revenue picture is far less flattering. Legal operators captured an estimated 59% of online GGR, up from 54%. The KSA said the gap implies people gambling illegally suffer considerably higher losses on average.

Those illegal estimates rest on Google Ads search volumes. The KSA excluded some operators it believes artificially inflate their search data. On that basis, it sees the unlicensed market stabilising, and found no sign that tighter rules have dented channelisation.

Enforcement keeps coming. EOD Code SRL was recently handed a record fine of €37.25 million. Collecting is another matter. Only €1.5 million of more than €88 million in fines issued over five and a half years has been recovered, a KSA spokesperson told Trouw, as reported by NL Times.

Quieter ads, busier registers

Licensed operators cut online advertising placements by a third, from around 75,000 a month to 50,000. Unlicensed advertising is the bigger irritant for the industry. Trade body VNLOK is taking Meta to court over illegal gambling ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Demand for help is rising. Specialist services treated 3,108 people for gambling as a primary addiction in 2025, up more than 14% from 2,708. The Cruks self-exclusion register held about 120,200 registrations on 31 July 2026, growing by roughly 2,000 a month.

Operators are flagging more customers as well. Requests and operator notifications for involuntary exclusion rose from 442 to 746 between the second half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. The KSA linked most of the increase to licensee notifications, after it told operators in 2025 they were filing too few.

After the final whistle

VNLOK has cautioned that it is too early to call a structural recovery, given how much the World Cup contributed. The second-half report, with no major tournament to lean on, will show whether the revenue share gains stick.

Operators are already carrying a 37.8% gambling tax in 2026. They also face government advertising ban plans covering both ads and bonuses.

The account data may carry the most weight in The Hague. If players are stacking accounts to stretch their limits, the per-account model starts to look porous. That makes the case for limits that follow the player, rather than the brand, harder to ignore.