Dutch licensed gambling market share rises to 59% in 2025
Kansspelautoriteit data show licensed operators capturing a larger share of Dutch gambling revenue, with sports betting lifted by the World Cup and new scrutiny on young adult accounts and online advertising.
The Dutch regulator Kansspelautoriteit (Ksa) says licensed operators accounted for about 59% of total gross gaming yield in the country during 2025, up from 54% a year earlier.
The figures come from the Ksa's annual report for 2025 and its semi-annual report covering the first half of 2026, both published on Thursday and reported by iGaming Business.
The regulator's eleventh monitoring report found that gross gaming yield from licensed operators climbed by roughly 11% in the first six months of 2026 compared with the second half of 2025, reaching an estimated €670 million, or around $750 million, equivalent to about €110 million a month.
Casino-style games played against the house generated the bulk of that total, around €492 million, or 73%. Sports betting brought in roughly €163 million, or 24%, up from about 20% in the previous half-year.
Ksa said the increase in sports betting turnover may be tied to the men's FIFA World Cup. Betting activity swung more sharply from month to month than casino play, and the regulator recorded a notable jump in new accounts opened in June.
Across the first half of 2026, 563,000 new accounts were opened, compared with 529,000 in the second half of 2025.
Measuring the illegal market remains difficult, according to Ksa, which combines consumer panel data from GfK with a method based on Google Ads search volumes to estimate activity on unlicensed sites.
For the first half of 2026, Ksa puts the number of monthly players using only illegal sites at roughly 20,000, with an additional 10,000 splitting their activity between licensed and unlicensed operators. The share of gamblers sticking to legal providers was estimated at between 94% and 97%, depending on which methodology was applied.
Because the pool of illegal-market users is comparatively small relative to the revenue attributed to that segment, Ksa suggests those players may be losing considerably more on average than customers of licensed operators. The regulator cautioned that these estimates carry significant uncertainty and said it continues to refine its methods.
In the first half of 2026, monthly active accounts at licensed operators averaged 1.48 million, a rise from 1.38 million in the second half of 2025. Yet independent panel data compiled by GfK showed no actual increase in the number of individuals gambling with licensed providers.
Ksa estimated that 820,000 people used licensed services at some point during the period, with an average of about 490,000 active in any given month. The gap between account growth and stable player numbers points to more frequent use of multiple accounts, which the regulator linked to consumer responses to rule changes including the net deposit limits introduced in October 2024.
Average monthly losses per account stayed broadly stable, with licensed operators reporting a mean of €75; accounts belonging to 18 to 23-year-olds averaged €34 a month. Adjusting for people who hold multiple accounts or gamble only intermittently, Ksa calculated average losses of €137 per person each month, a figure that had stood at €121 in the preceding six months.
Young adults remain a focus for the regulator. The 18-23 age group makes up about 22% of licensed gambling accounts despite representing only around 9.2% of the Dutch adult population.
An earlier Ksa analysis found that of 15,761 newly funded accounts opened between 1 and 7 May 2026, 33% belonged to 18-24 year olds, and 41% of those were opened by people who had just turned 18. The regulator also highlighted a marked spike in registrations around a customer's 18th birthday: across 2024-25, accounts opened by 18-year-olds were registered on the actual birthday in 11% of cases, rising to 38% within the following month.
Demand for treatment linked to gambling also rose. In 2025, 3,108 people received specialised care where gambling was recorded as their main problem, a 14% increase on the year before.
Cruks, the national self-exclusion register, added roughly 2,076 new entries a month on average, taking its total to around 120,200 by 31 July 2026. Involuntary registrations, triggered when operators flag customers, also rose sharply, the report found.
Advertising activity by licensed operators fell sharply: average monthly online placements, which stood at 75,000 in the second half of 2025, dropped to around 50,000 in the opening six months of 2026. That decline coincides with the Dutch government's continued push to restrict gambling promotion. Ministers tabled a near-total ban on online gambling advertising in June, with the coalition reportedly drawing a comparison between gambling and sex work.
Separately, the Dutch online gambling association VNLOK has summoned Meta to court, alleging the company allowed widespread illegal gambling advertising to reach Dutch consumers. VNLOK claims more than 90% of gambling adverts appearing on Facebook originate from operators not licensed in the Netherlands.