The Dutch licensed market captured around 59% of total gross gaming yield (BSR) in 2025, up from 54% the previous year.
This according to Kansspelautoriteit’s (Ksa) annual report for 2025 and semi-annual report for the first half of 2026, published on Thursday.
The Netherlands’ regulated online gambling market regained momentum in the first half of 2026, with gross gaming yield (BSR) rising by about 11% compared with the previous six months, according to the regulator.
The regulator’s eleventh monitoring report, covering January to June, estimated that licensed operators generated around €670 million ($750 million) in BSR , roughly €110 million a month.
Casino games played against the house accounted for about 73% of the total, or €492 million. Sports betting made up around 24%, or €163 million, up from approximately 20% in the second half of 2025.
The KSA said the rise in sports betting and overall revenue may be linked to the men’s FIFA World Cup. Sports wagering fluctuated more from month to month than casino activity, and the report records a clear increase in new accounts in June.
Across the half-year, 563,000 accounts were opened, compared with 529,000 in the previous six-month period.
Illegal gambling and market share
The KSA said estimating the unlicensed market remains difficult. It combined GfK panel data on participation with a Google Ads search-volume method to estimate revenue at illegal sites.
For the first half of 2026, the regulator estimates that around 20,000 people gambled exclusively with unlicensed operators each month, while another 10,000 used both licensed and unlicensed sites.
Depending on the method used, the share of players using legal providers was estimated at between 94% and 97%.
The gap between the relatively small number of people using illegal sites and their estimated share of revenue suggests that illegal-market players may lose considerably more on average than those using licensed providers.
The regulator emphasised that the illegal-market estimates are subject to uncertainty and says it is continuing to refine its measurement methods.
More accounts, but not more players
Licensed operators reported an average of 1.48 million active accounts per month, up from 1.38 million in the second half of 2025. But independent panel data from market researcher GfK indicated that the number of people gambling with legal operators did not increase.
The KSA estimated that 820,000 people gambled with licensed providers at some point during the first half of 2026. On an average month, the figure was about 490,000.
The difference between rising account numbers and a stable number of players suggested that people may be using multiple accounts more often. The KSA said this could be connected to consumer responses to regulatory changes, including net deposit limits introduced in October 2024.
Player losses and risk
Average monthly losses per account used were broadly stable. Licensed operators reported a mean of €75 per month in the first half of 2026 For accounts used by 18–23-year-olds, the average monthly loss was €34.
A separate KSA estimate, which accounted for people using multiple accounts and gambling intermittently, put average losses at €137 per person per month. That was up from €121 in the second half of 2025.
Young adults remained a particular focus. People aged 18-23 accounted for about 22% of legal gambling accounts, despite representing roughly 9.2% of the adult population.
Earlier this year, Ksa released findings that out of 15,761 newly funded gambling accounts that were opened between 1-7 May 2026, young adults aged 18-24 comprised 33% of new accounts; notably, 41% of these accounts are opened by newly turned 18-year-olds.
There was also a pronounced surge in account registrations on or shortly after their 18th birthday. In 2024-25, 11% of accounts opened by 18-year-olds were registered on their birthday, and 38% within a month.
Demand for support services continued to rise. In 2025, 3,108 people received specialised treatment where gambling was recorded as their primary problem, a 14% increase on 2024.
The national self-exclusion register, Cruks, added an average of about 2,076 people a month, reaching approximately 120,200 registrations by 31 July 2026. The report also recorded a sharp rise in involuntary registrations following operator notifications.
Advertising falls
Online advertising by licensed operators declined by about 33%, from an average of 75,000 placements a month in the second half of 2025 to around 50,000 in the first half of 2026.
The Netherlands has continued a fight against gambling advertisements throughout this year. In June, the government tabled a near-total ban of online gambling advertisement. The coalition government had also compared gamling to sex work.
In addition, VNLOK officially summoned Meta to court after alleging the tech giant had allowed widespread illegal gambling advertisements to reach consumers in the Netherlands.
The association has claimed that more than 90% of gambling advertisements on Facebook originate from operators that are not licensed in the Netherlands.