Dutch Gambling Ad Ban Risks Pushing Players Offshore as Legal Share Falls Below 50%

Justice and Security State Secretary Claudia van Bruggen announced the bundle connected June 12, proposing a near-total prohibition connected online gambling advertising, a prohibition connected bonuses specified arsenic sign-up escaped bets, an overarching deposit bounds crossed licensed platforms, and an affordability trial for players who privation to rise it. The furniture is besides studying a headdress connected the fig of online licenses. Van Bruggen said it is “particularly concerning” that much people, particularly young people, person started gambling online and tally into trouble. The measures necessitate authorities earlier taking effect.

The Netherlands already restricts gambling ads heavy – a role-model prohibition and a prohibition connected untargeted advertizing person been successful unit since 2022 and 2023 – bur officials concluded young radical inactive spot excessively overmuch promotion. Notably, the authorities has signaled it volition lone revisit raising the minimum online gambling property from 18 to 21 erstwhile enforcement against amerciable operators is effective, deeming the measurement excessively risky earlier then.

In its 2025 yearly report, the KSA (Kansspelautoriteit), the Dutch regulator, said channelization by walk fell beneath 50% successful the archetypal fractional of 2025 – meaning unlicensed operators present seizure astir gambling wealth successful the country, adjacent arsenic astir 94% of players enactment registered with licensed sites. This displacement followed earlier tightening (monthly deposit limits of €700, oregon €300 for 18-to-24s, and gambling-tax rises from 30.5% to 37.8%). The signifier echoes Belgium and Italy, wherever advertisement bans coincided with black-market growth; 1 survey enactment the Dutch amerciable stock supra 35% by precocious 2023, up from astir 20% successful 2021.

The furniture pairs the prohibition with tougher enforcement precisely due to the fact that it expects leakage, saying tens of thousands of amerciable sites are progressive successful the country. The standard – and the crypto magnitude – surfaced successful April erstwhile authorities lottery relation Nederlandse Loterij sued the operators of Qbet, the largest unlicensed Dutch platform, astatine The Hague. There, the KSA’s grounds €24.8 cardinal good was branded excessively debased by its ain seat – Dutch instrumentality caps penalties astatine 10% of planetary turnover – and crypto and anonymous payments were cited arsenic aggravating factors successful a marketplace wherever fractional of walk flows to unlicensed sites.

Van Bruggen has acknowledged the hazard herself, saying the prohibition indispensable beryllium built with enforceability successful caput to forestall evasion. That leaves the cardinal question open: whether stripping licensed operators of advertizing and bonuses protects players, oregon hands the offshore marketplace – flagged by regulators for crypto and anonymous payments, and beyond the scope of Cruks, the nationalist self-exclusion registry – a larger stock of a marketplace it is already winning. The measure indispensable wide the House of Representatives, and the affordability survey underpinning the deposit headdress is not expected until the archetypal fractional of 2027.