Key Points
- KSA confirmed channelisation fell below 50% by revenue in H1 2025, meaning unlicensed operators now match the legal market in gross revenue.
- DNS blocking legislation is in development, with public consultation not due until early 2027, leaving enforcement reliant on voluntary cooperation with Big Tech in the interim.
- The gambling age debate has been deliberately shelved until the black market is tackled, a sequencing decision that carries serious political risk.
Ten Dutch MPs walked into a three-hour Gambling Committee session on Thursday representing parties from opposite ends of the political spectrum, and walked out agreeing on almost nothing except one thing: illegal gambling in the Netherlands has to be stopped, faster and harder than it has been. That narrow consensus is historically unusual. What makes it genuinely interesting, though, is not what they agreed on, but what they left unresolved, and who is supposed to act on any of it.
The Crisis That Forced Agreement
The urgency behind Thursday’s debate did not arrive without warning. Justice State Secretary KT van Bruggen’s April 2026 letter to parliament acknowledged what the KSA’s own data had already established: channelisation by revenue had slipped below 50% for the first time since the Netherlands legalised online gambling in 2021. The KSA’s 2025 annual report placed the illegal online market at approximately €617 million in H1 2025, fractionally ahead of the €602 million recorded by licensed operators across the same period. The legal market no longer holds the majority share of Dutch gambling spending.
The reason behind this problem is easy to pinpoint. The introduction of deposit caps in October 2024, amounting to €700 for players above 24 years of age and €300 for those who were between 18 and 24, was aimed at reducing the risk associated with gambling. In contrast to this, the data gathered by KSA demonstrates that the legal operator GGR has been reduced by almost 10%, while the larger spenders have been shifted towards illegal operators.
DNS Blocking Is Coming, But Not Yet
Members pushed Van Bruggen for website-blocking powers comparable to those used against terrorist content and child pornography sites. She confirmed the cabinet is developing legislation to introduce DNS blocking for illegal gambling domains, with public consultation scheduled for early 2027. That is a real commitment. It is also, strictly speaking, a promise about a consultation process, not a functioning law.
Two details that received far less attention in post-debate reporting: the KSA currently has no legal mechanism to force internet service providers to block foreign domains, and its ability to collect fines from offshore operators is constrained by a statutory cap of 10% of global GGR. The regulator has opened discussions with the Justice Ministry to address the fine cap, but no timeline exists for that either. Malta’s Bill 55 adds a further layer of complexity. Van Bruggen acknowledged the legislation complicates enforcement action against operators licensed in Malta, though she expressed cautious optimism that European Commission proceedings against that legislation may ease the situation over the coming years.
And even if DNS blocking legislation passes on schedule, Forum for Democracy’s Iem Al Biyati raised an inconvenient point during Thursday’s session: Dutch young people are increasingly familiar with VPNs, tools that bypass domain blocks entirely. That observation landed without a clear answer.
The Meta Conversation and Why It Is Not Enough
The advertising problem cannot be separated from the enforcement problem, and Thursday made that clearer than most coverage has acknowledged. In June 2026, Dutch trade body VNLOK, representing licensed operators, sued Meta and filed a formal complaint with the European Commission, alleging the platform allowed over 70,000 gambling ads per quarter to target Dutch users, with over 95% originating from unlicensed operators and fewer than 5% removed. The KSA filed thousands of individual complaints against these ads every month throughout 2025. Each ad typically stayed live for approximately a day and a half before reappearing under a slightly different identity or URL.
Van Bruggen’s reaction in Thursday’s hearing was cautious. “Meta, as well as one of the parties, but also Google, are actually very open to this discussion,” she said to the committee. The government will be receiving reports every six months from both platforms on illegal gambling advertisements. Members of the VVD, on their part, demanded a “tougher position.” But this is the gap that VNLOK aims to fill through its lawsuit. “Vulnerable players, and this includes young people, are at risk” as long as this situation continues, according to the Chairman of VNLOK, Björn Fuchs. According to Van Bruggen, the Digital Services Act will be the means to enforce such regulations at the EU level rather than domestically. It has already been applied in Dutch courts once before against Meta; the decision of the Amsterdam District Court came in October 2025, that the settings of Meta’s platform violated the act with daily financial sanctions starting in January 2026.
The Gambling Age Question and What the Sequencing Reveals
Van Bruggen made a deliberate choice during Thursday’s session: park the age debate behind the black market problem. SGP MP Diederik van Dijk and CDA MP Tijs van den Brink argued for raising the minimum gambling age from 18 to 21. A 2025 bill had already proposed raising the threshold for higher-risk products such as online slots. Van Bruggen held her position, arguing that a hard age increase before the black market is controlled risks pushing younger players directly toward unlicensed platforms. “It is time to tackle that illegal offer properly, so that we can move towards a time when we do have to move towards an age increase. If that turns out not to be necessary, then we don’t do it,” she said.
Van Dijk went further than the age limit question. He called for a complete reversal of the 2021 Online Gambling Act itself and a total ban on gambling advertising across all formats, including lotteries and land-based casinos. He also questioned whether state-owned entities Holland Casino and Nederlandse Loterij can objectively assess gambling harm while remaining government assets. Holland Casino CEO Petra de Ruiter, speaking to iGB last week, said she was proud of the responsible gambling structures in place, including a board of scientists, experts with lived experience, and the operator’s own RG executives. That defence, however, does not directly address Van Dijk’s conflict-of-interest argument, which is a sharper challenge than it is typically given credit for.
Expert Analysis
We should be precise about what Thursday’s debate actually produced. Parliamentary consensus on the black market is notable, but it has arrived after the KSA recorded a 34% year-on-year rise in illegal gambling reports in 2025, reaching 2,005 cases, and after the illegal sector had already drawn level with the legal one by revenue. Consensus at this point is catching up, not leading.
The DNS blocking plan represents genuine movement. A consultation due in early 2027 means no functioning law before 2028 at the earliest, and that gap matters. The voluntary cooperation model with Meta and Google, meanwhile, produced 70,000 illegal ads per quarter and a removal rate below 5%. Calling that being “open to conversation” is accurate. It is not enforcement.
What we find harder to ignore is that the Netherlands created the conditions for this problem through policy decisions that were individually defensible. Deposit limits, tax increases on operators, and tightening advertising rules on licensed brands were all designed to reduce harm. Together, they made the legal market structurally less competitive while leaving unlicensed platforms entirely unrestricted. The black market did not grow despite Dutch gambling policy; it grew because Dutch gambling policy made the legal alternative less attractive without making the illegal one harder to access.
Van Bruggen’s sequencing logic, black market enforcement before age limit changes, is the right call in principle. But every month without functioning site-blocking or meaningful platform accountability is another month the illegal sector consolidates its share of Dutch gambling spend. Parliament has found its agreement. Now it needs to find its mechanism.
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