Growth of the Gaming Market Continues at a Slower Pace: de Kansspelautoriteit (Ksa) Report

The legal market for online gambling has grown again in the past six months. The gross gaming result (BSR; stake minus prizes paid) has increased, but that growth is less strong than in previously measured periods. The number of player accounts that were actually played remained virtually the same. This means that market growth appears to be leveling off after two years.

This is evident from the fifth monitoring report on online gambling (pdf, 222 kB) that the Gaming Authority (Ksa) published today. The BSR totaled 1.33 billion euros in the period August 2022 to July 2023. This means that the market has grown again, but less strongly than before. From August 2022 to January 2023, BSR grew by 33 percent. From January 2023 to August 2023 it was 8 percent.

René Jansen, chairman of the Gaming Authority:

This fifth monitoring report shows that the gaming market continues to grow, even if it is leveling off. This means that the market is developing as expected. The continued growth ensures increasing responsibility among providers. The Ksa continues to strictly monitor that Dutch players can gamble in a safe market, with sufficient attention to addiction prevention and insight into possible problematic gaming behavior. Duty of care and addiction prevention are a crucial part of our supervision.

Number of players

Dutch people collectively played with 826,000 active accounts in July 2023. Six months earlier, in January, there were 859,000. Because players can use more than one account, the number of accounts does not directly indicate the number of players. In its latest report, the Ksa estimates that 676,000 Dutch people have gambled online in the past six months; that is 4.7 percent of the adult population. An average of 417,000 Dutch people gambled per month.

New calculation method

The previous monitoring report indicated that players lost an average of €310 per month. This number was only based on the months of actual play, and did not provide a clear picture of the long-term loss of a player. The total loss after, for example, 6 months cannot be calculated with that number. The Ksa has therefore now calculated the total loss over the long term (in this case six months). That amount is an average of €1017 per player for the period January 2023 to July and converts to €170 per month.

Channelization

When the online market was opened, the objective was that at least 8 in 10 players would play with legal providers after opening, in a safe environment with many guarantees in the field of addiction prevention. This target is still being met: 93% of players only play via legal websites (an increase of 1% compared to the previous six months). New players, who did not play before the opening of the market, almost all (98%) only play with legal providers.

Young adults

The fifth monitoring report also specifically looked at the proportion of young adults. In July 2023, they gambled with 170,000 of the accounts used. That is 21% of the total number of accounts. This is a slight decrease compared to January: when they played with 184,000 accounts. Since, according to Statistics Netherlands, young adults make up 9.4% of the total adult population, they have relatively many accounts per player. They do lose less money per month per account, namely €59.

Cruks

The number of registrations in the Central Register for the Exclusion of Gambling (Cruks) continues to increase. Registered players exclude themselves for at least six months (longer is also possible) from participating in high-risk games of chance with all legal providers in the Netherlands, both online and land-based. In August (the benchmark of the monitoring report) there were more than 48,000 people in Cruks. When the report was published in September, that number had now passed 50,000.

Advertisement

In the previous monitoring report, there was no ban on untargeted advertising for online gambling, but a shift from TV to online was already noted. With the introduction of the ban on July 1, the number of television advertisements fell to zero; Only expressions of program sponsorship can be seen on television. This is allowed until July 1, 2024.

SOURCE: de Kansspelautoriteit (Ksa).