Dutch online gaming market surpasses 1 million accounts

The KSA has released its latest monitoring report.

The Netherlands.- The Dutch gambling regulator, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has published its latest monitoring report on the Dutch gambling market. The report shows that the number of active accounts on the regulated market surpassed 1 million for the first time, however the pace of growth has slowed.

Dutch online gross gaming revenue (GGR) for 2023 reached €1.39bn, a rise of 28 per cent year-on-year. However, the last half of the year saw an increase of just 1 per cent compared to the first. The number of active accounts reached 1.1 million, up 13 per cent from 970,000.

The KSA says that 726,000 players were active in the second half of 2023, around 5 per cent of the adult population. In the same period, players lost an average of €958. That’s around €160 per month, down from €170 in the first six months of the year.

The KSA said that young adults were overrepresented among players, with those aged 18-23 (9.5 per cent of the population), accounting for 22 per cent of online gambling accounts. This was in line with the previous report.

The report also suggests that the Netherlands’ ban on gambling advertising in July 2023 has had little impact on the channelisation of existing players, but it appears that it may have had an impact on new players. It found that 90 per cent of gamblers play on licensed sites, which remains above the 80 per cent target.

The KSA said: “The report shows that the market has not experienced any noticeable contraction since the ban. However, the number of visits to gambling websites by people who are not players has decreased significantly. People who already played do not come less often, so the advertising ban mainly affects people who do not yet play.”

KSA calls for more powers

Last month, René Jansen, the KSA’s outgoing chairman, reiterated his call for more supervisory powers. In a blog post, he said he has taken up the issue of mystery shopping with Franc Weerwind, the Netherlands’ Minister for Legal Protection.

Jansen believes the KSA needs to be able to use clandestine monitoring to more effectively enforce operator duty of care responsibilities. He said such methods would provide “better insight into the techniques that providers use to attract and retain players”.