Luc Goossens: “The health of the Dutch gambling market is decided at its illegal edge”

Since the regulated online gambling market opened in October 2021, Dutch policy has revolved around one central question: are we managing to keep players with licensed operators? According to Luc Goossens, editor and analyst at the independent consumer platform oplichting.com, it is precisely the players who move to illegal casinos who tell us the most about how the system is working.

His team tracks the line between legal and illegal supply daily and maintains an up-to-date overview of legal online casinos in the Netherlands. From that vantage point, Goossens sees not only how illegal operators approach Dutch players, but also how well-intentioned measures can sometimes have the opposite effect.

Focus Gaming News spoke with him about channelisation, stricter play limits, advertising restrictions, and the question of how the Netherlands can keep players inside the regulated market.

Since the Remote Gambling Act (Wet kansspelen op afstand) came into force, channelisation is often named as the most important yardstick. What does that mean in practice?

Channelisation sounds like a fairly technical concept, but the idea behind it is simple. People who want to gamble online should, as far as possible, do so with an operator holding a licence from the Kansspelautoriteit, the Dutch gambling authority.

That is the core of the entire Dutch model. You cannot make online gambling disappear by banning it. That did not work before October 2021 either. The legislator therefore chose regulation: allow it within a controlled environment and make sure the legal offering stays attractive enough.

The channelisation rate tells us how well that is going. But you do have to look carefully at what exactly is being measured. The percentage of players who play exclusively with legal operators is still high. The most recent KSA report put it at around 91 per cent.

Look at the money being gambled, and a completely different picture emerges. An estimated 53 per cent of gross gaming revenue ends up in the legal market. So a relatively small group of players at illegal operators can be responsible for a strikingly large share of total losses.

For me, that is perhaps the most important signal of all. You can report high channelisation among players and still have a serious problem on the illegal side of the market.

Read more here: https://focusgn.com/special-report-the-rising-cost-of-compliance-how-fiscal-pressure-is-reshaping-europes-regulated-gambling-markets

Is channelisation a better measure, then, than the revenue of licensed operators?

Definitely. The revenue of legal operators mainly tells you how large the regulated part of the market is. The channelisation rate shows how well the system as a whole is working.

A legal market can look perfectly well organised on paper. There can be strict rules on advertising, deposits, identification and player protection. But when it is precisely the players with high losses who switch to illegal operators, part of the risk disappears from view.

That is why I think the illegal edge of the market matters at least as much as the regulated centre. That is where you see which players drop out, why they do so, and which arguments illegal operators use to draw them in.

Channelisation is also about more than numbers. The quality of the channelisation counts too. Do recreational players stay legal while players with problematic or intensive gambling behaviour move to offshore casinos? Then the percentage still looks reasonable, but the protection has stopped working for exactly the group that is most vulnerable.

What do you see at oplichting.com at that illegal edge of the market?

Illegal operators are presenting themselves ever more professionally. The days when you could spot an unlicensed casino immediately by its badly translated website and missing contact details are largely behind us.

Many sites are technically polished, offer Dutch-language pages, and use payment methods Dutch consumers recognise. Sometimes they appear in search engines right next to legal operators. For the average player, the difference is often far from obvious.

We also see that some parties use words like ‘legal’, ‘safe’ and ‘licensed’ very freely. A foreign licence is then presented as though it grants permission to approach Dutch players. It does not. Offering online gambling legally in the Netherlands requires a licence from the KSA.

In more serious cases, regulators’ logos are misused, or home-made licences and certificates appear on the website. Brand imitation happens too. A domain name, colour scheme or logo closely resembles that of a well-known operator. The player thinks they have arrived at a trusted brand, while in fact they are depositing money with someone else entirely.

What do these operators use to try to win Dutch players over?

Usually they sell exactly what has been restricted or banned in the regulated market. They advertise higher bonuses, fewer identity checks, playing without CRUKS, and virtually unlimited deposits.

The message is often not that the casino is illegal. On the contrary, the operator says the player gets more freedom there. Terms like ‘casino without limits’ or ‘no interference’ deliberately play on irritation with Dutch rules.

The game offering can play a role as well. Certain features and game types that are not available at Dutch licence holders are explicitly sold as an advantage outside the legal system.

That makes the competition fundamentally unequal. A licence holder has to invest in checks, interventions, data security and responsible gambling. An illegal operator can avoid all of those obligations and then present their absence as customer friendliness.

Can stricter protection rules genuinely push players towards the illegal market?

That risk exists. It would be too easy to say that every new restriction automatically leads to more illegal gambling. The stricter rules have also had demonstrable effects. Very high losses at licensed operators have gone down.

At the same time, the KSA itself warns that heavy players may have moved to illegal operators. Search volume for major illegal gambling sites also rose. How many of those visitors actually go on to play cannot be said with any certainty. The signal itself deserves serious attention, precisely because it is so hard to interpret.

Since October 2024, stricter rules on deposit limits and financial capacity have applied in the Netherlands. As soon as a player wants to exceed the set thresholds, an operator has to check whether that is financially responsible. That can prevent someone from losing enormous sums in a short space of time.

But the same player can find an offshore casino within a few minutes where nobody asks about their income. If the legal offering is experienced purely as a collection of roadblocks, while illegal sites promise speed and freedom, you have a problem.

Where do you think the balance should sit?

Player protection has to be robust, but it also has to remain understandable and workable. A measure that offers maximum protection on paper is not automatically the best measure if part of the target group leaves the protected system because of it.

Limits should stay. But every new restriction also deserves a channelisation test before it is introduced. What happens to players who run up against the rule? Do they stop, do they adjust their behaviour, or do they look for an operator with no supervision at all?

That last question is sometimes asked too late.

The best rules intervene precisely where behaviour is risky and cause as little unnecessary friction as possible for recreational players. When almost every customer constantly feels held back, checked or distrusted, that helps illegal operators with their marketing.

Does the same tension apply to advertising restrictions?

Yes, although it works out slightly differently there. The sheer volume of gambling advertising after the market opened provoked a lot of resistance. That was understandable. Some campaigns were everywhere, and public tolerance for them evaporated quickly.

So restrictions were inevitable. Even so, advertising also has a channelisation function. A licensed operator needs to be able to make it visible that it is operating legally.

New players in particular need to know which operators fall under Dutch supervision. You cannot expect every consumer to study the licence register first.

The solution, as I see it, lies in targeted, controlled visibility. Legal operators do not have to be everywhere, but they do have to be able to distinguish themselves recognisably from the illegal market.

And how do you view the blocking of illegal websites?

Blocking can be useful, particularly against operators who deliberately and repeatedly keep approaching Dutch players. It makes access harder and can prevent consumers from unintentionally landing on an illegal website through a search.

But a block is never final. Domains can change, mirror sites appear quickly, and new addresses get shared through social media. You buy yourself time, but you do not remove the underlying demand.

Education remains necessary as well. A player who understands why an operator is illegal is less likely to go looking for that same casino’s next domain.

Which protections actually keep players inside the legal system?

A KSA licence is the starting point, but consumers also need to understand what sits behind it. It is not just a logo at the bottom of the website.

Licensed operators have to establish players’ identity. iDIN is widely used for that, although it is not the only possible verification method. Before every session, it has to be checked whether someone is registered in Cruks, the Dutch self-exclusion register. The gaming system has to be certified, and key processes have to be logged.

On top of that, there are requirements around responsible gambling, advertising, anti-money laundering, payment processing and the handling of player data. If something goes wrong, there is a complaints procedure, and the KSA can step in.

No system offers complete certainty. Even with a licensed operator, a player can be unhappy about a payout or customer service. The difference is that rules, supervision and avenues of redress exist. At an offshore casino, an account can be closed for no clear reason, and the consumer is often left virtually powerless.

Is Dutch-language customer service really that important?

More than many operators think. A licence matters legally, but day-to-day trust is built in contact with the customer.

When a player has questions about a withdrawal, a verification or a play limit, they want a clear answer. Not after four days, and not through an automatically translated message. Good Dutch-language support can stop frustration from turning into the thought that an illegal operator would be simpler.

The same goes for interventions around gambling behaviour. A generic warning on the screen makes little impression. A well-timed, understandable intervention can.

Player protection counts on two levels at once. It has to be demonstrable to the regulator, and the player has to actually notice it in practice and understand why a check is happening.

Why is leakage to the illegal market also a problem for the industry and the government?

Licence holders lose revenue to parties that do not carry the same costs and obligations. That weakens the commercial foundation of the regulated market.

The government misses out on income too. Illegal operators generally pay no Dutch gambling tax and invest nothing in Dutch prevention policy. Meanwhile, the social costs of gambling problems still end up in the Netherlands.

But the biggest risk is perhaps the loss of credibility. The regulated model rests on a trade-off: operators get access to the market and accept strict conditions in return. When more and more money disappears outside that system, it becomes harder to maintain that regulation works better than a ban.

That is why channelisation is not a commercial detail. It is the condition the whole system rests on.

Where do you think the Dutch market is heading over the next few years?

“The debate will turn less on whether stricter rules are needed and more on which rules actually work. Since 2021, the Netherlands has introduced a lot of measures in quick succession. That sometimes makes it hard to determine the effect of any single one of them.

I expect more attention to go to money flows towards illegal operators, not just to player numbers. That is where the clearest warning sits right now.

Enforcement will have to broaden as well. The Ksa can impose fines, but an illegal operator with no assets or offices in the Netherlands does not always lose sleep over that. Cooperation with payment companies, technology platforms and foreign regulators is therefore becoming steadily more important.

There is a job for licensed operators too. They should not only comply with the rules, but also show why playing legally is the better choice for the consumer. That calls for reliable payments, clear terms and conditions, reachable support, and protection that feels targeted rather than bureaucratic.

The number of rules says little in itself. What says far more is how many players stay within those rules of their own accord, including at the moments when that is not quite so easy.”

The current figures in this interview were checked against the Kansspelautoriteit’s spring 2026 monitoring report. In it, the Ksa reports player channelisation of approximately 91 per cent and channelisation of 53 per cent measured by money.