Key Points
- The Dutch gambling market took a 9% hit in 2025, while online gambling took an even bigger beating, revenue dropped a whopping 21%.
- Ministers had hoped to see €216 million in extra tax from gambling in 2026, but now think they’ll be lucky to get €57 million. To put that in perspective, they were expecting three times that amount.
- Licensed sites are still attracting the lion’s share of online players but are only raking in 59% of the revenue, it’s a curious situation.
When it came to tax, Dutch ministers thought they were on for a €108 million windfall in 2025. In the end, it was just €2 million. The Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) dropped the annual market scan on 29 October which showed a market that’s been hit hard despite the tax hike.
And if that wasn’t confusing enough, the figures also suggest that Dutch players are heading somewhere that isn’t licensed. The stats show that licensed sites attract a massive 94% of online players but they only get 59% of the online revenue.
Licensed Market Takes a 9% hit as Online Gambling Falls Off a Cliff
The GGR (Gross Gaming Revenue) for the licensed Dutch market has tanked from €4.5 billion to €4.1 billion in 2025. The KSA has adjusted the 2024 figures for inflation, so that 9% drop is a real fall in revenue, not just a case of prices going up.
Online gambling suffered the worst of it. GGR plummeted 21%, that’s a massive €320 million drop to a total of €1.2 billion. Casino games and sports betting both took a hit, house games were down 18.2% and sports betting revenue plummeted by 30.2%. Sports betting took an especially hard hit thanks to last year’s Euro 2024 tournament.
The average Dutch player lost €282 on licensed sites in 2025 (although that is up from €282 in 2024, not down). The EU average however is a whopping €369.
Deposit Limits Are Likely to Have Played a Role in the Decline
Rules that were introduced last year, these are the ones which impose deposit limits, might have had an impact on the recent decline in gambling revenue. Players aged 24 and over can deposit no more than €700 a month. Younger players have a lower limit, €300 a month. And if anyone wants to deposit more, they have to show they can afford it.
Before the rules came into force, nearly 10% of players were making large deposits. By the time March 2025 rolled around, that had fallen to just 2.2%. It looks like the new limits have reduced the number of players who can deposit large amounts and the KSA reckon that’s probably contributed to the overall decline in revenue.
Operators are also paying more in tax now, the rate went up from 30.5% to 34.2% at the start of 2025 (not that it’s helped). And just to top it all off, online gambling sponsorship of sports was banned on 1 July 2025.
Holland Casino Sees Growth While Gaming Halls Suffer
Land-based casino business in 2025 had a pretty mixed bag of results. Holland Casino, which has the monopoly on casinos in the country, managed to boost GGR by 2.8% to €683 million.
Visits to their venues also went up, from 5.9 million to 6.1 million, even though they’d closed one of their locations. Slots were the ones driving most of the growth rather than the usual table games.
Arcade-type gaming venues and hospitality venues with gaming machines had a really bad year. Their combined revenue fell by 4.7%. Arcade revenue plummeted from €562 million to €539 million. That’s a drop of €23 million.
The number of gaming halls did drop from 197 to 194. But have you noticed that despite the drop in the number of venues, visits actually ticked upwards to 11.7 million. On a separate note, the land-based betting market saw a bit of an explosion, revenue jumped by 8.5% to €86 million, with about all of that coming from sports betting.
Earlier in the year, a decline in gambling locations was already starting to show. In August, the KSA reported that the number of locations had fallen by a whopping 9% compared to the previous quarter. It turns out that over the five years between 2020 and 2025, the average yearly decline was 6%.
KSA chair Michel Groothuizen pointed out that the level of gambling tax was ” fundamentally at odds with our policy objective of giving players more protection.”
Tax Forecast Way Below the Government’s Target
A joint report was published towards the end of June 2026 by the Ministry of Finance and the KSA to examine the impact of the tax increase. The report compares any extra tax revenue with 2024, using 2026 prices.
When the government first laid out the tax increase in 2025 and 2026, they were expecting a €108 million boost in 2025 and €216 million in 2026. However the latest forecast for 2025 is a tiny €2 million. For 2026, it’s a more impressive €57 million, but still way short of the target at €159 million.
It’s worth noting these figures are talking about extra tax revenue, not the total amount of tax they collected. The 2026 forecast is based on data up to the first quarter of the year.
Later on in the budget for 2027, the forecast for 2026 was increased by €89 million. This change was largely due to tax payments for 2025 arriving in 2026.
The joint report isn’t pointing the blame at the tax increase alone. It also notes changes such as deposit limits, the sports sponsorship ban, Euro 2024 and tighter supervision as contributors to the shortfall. According to its model, the tax increase would have added around €83 million in 2025 and €138 million in 2026. These estimates come with a pretty wide margin of error.
In 2025, total gambling tax came in at €1.05 billion, compared to €1.06 billion in 2024. Again, these figures use the market scan’s inflation adjustment. The tax rate kept on rising, and that means tax receipts actually rose faster than the overall amount of revenue collected. On January 1st 2026, the tax rate hit 37.8%.
State-owned casino Holland Casino also pays a chunk of tax. The model predicts that its pre-tax profits are going to take a hit of around €27 million in 2025 and €54 million in 2026 because of the tax hike.
Nederlandse Loterij is also expected to see a decrease in its tax and levy contributions, a drop of €16 million in 2025 and €34 million in 2026.
Licensed Sites Attract 94% of Gamblers But Receive Only 59% of Online Revenues
Approximately 94% of online gamblers in the Netherlands use licensed gambling sites. However, operators that received licenses receive only 59% of the total online gambling revenue.
According to KSA, gamblers using unlicensed sites seem to be losing significantly more money on average. These estimates are derived from different calculations, and the 59% estimate is derived from search-volume data, not actual gambling activity on illegal sites.
An estimated 30,000 individuals used illegal gambling sites only on a monthly basis by late 2025, up from 19,000. According to KSA, these estimates are based on a sample of 6,000 people, including only 300 gamblers using online gambling services.
Channelling of revenues increased from 54% in H2 2025 to 59% in H1 2026. Still, despite this progress, approximately four out of ten euros gambled online go to operators that are outside of the licensed gambling market.
Online Gambling Industry Revives in 2026, but Multi-accounting is a Problem
Gross gaming revenues of licensed online operators were €670 million in H1 2026. This is 11% more than the previous six months. This growth can be explained by the World Cup since the share of sports betting revenues grew from 20% to 24%.
The number of active accounts also increased – operators reported 1.48 million active accounts per month on average, compared to 1.38 million in the previous period. However, only 490,000 people gamble online each month.
According to KSA, the World Cup might explain some part of this growth. An alternative explanation is the fact that players open multiple accounts to bypass deposit limits for each operator separately.
On June 12, 2026, the cabinet announced its intention to introduce a limit for deposits to the sum applicable to all online gambling providers. In addition, the government intends to prohibit advertising and bonuses, but no draft bill has been prepared.
Estimates of average monthly losses per participant reached €137 in H1 2026. It is 13% higher than the estimate of €121 in H2 2025, which was lower than €160 in H1 2024 according to KSA. According to KSA, these estimates do not support any conclusions.
In 2025, specialised addiction care treated 3,108 people who had gambling as a primary problem. The figure in 2024 was 2,708.
Expert Analysis: Blaming the Tax Alone Is Too Easy
Our view may annoy both sides of the debate. Blaming the tax increase alone does not match the evidence. The government’s own monitor estimates that the higher rate would have added about €83 million in 2025 if considered separately.
The same monitor identifies several other factors behind the fall in gambling revenue. Deposit limits, the sports sponsorship ban and tighter supervision were all government or regulatory choices. Ministers cannot expect the gambling market to reduce player losses while also delivering steadily higher tax receipts. They should be open about that trade-off rather than blame a single tax rate. The regulator says it warned about this effect before the increase took effect.
Operators say higher taxes and deposit limits have pushed players towards illegal gambling sites. The joint monitor says the available evidence does not support firm conclusions about the effect on channelisation.
Player protection also needs attention. The number of people receiving treatment for gambling problems increased by 14% in 2025, while deposit limits still applied separately to each operator. Treatment figures do not measure the total level of gambling harm, so neither side can use them to claim that the problem has been solved or made worse.
A single deposit limit covering all online operators could reduce gambling revenue further if it comes into force. The question for ministers is whether that would count as a policy failure or the price of stronger player protection.
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