Our next stop on this world tour takes us to one of the newer and stricter online gambling jurisdictions anywhere on the planet; the Netherlands and their regulatory body Kansspelautoriteit, or KSA for short.

While land-based gambling under the government monopoly has been a thing since the mid 1970s, the biggest revolution only took place five years ago when online gambling became legal. So while the online market is young, KSA has had their hands full pretty much since Day 1 as they have ushered in one of the more aggressive approaches to player protection and taxation seen to date.

The Dutch may be liberal socially and culturally, but there is absolutely no wiggle room when it comes to gambling. So, does this approach work?

A long road to tight regulations

The Netherlands has a long and storied history as a global naval and trading power, so it’s no surprise that gambling was introduced to the people in this region around the 14th century, with the world’s oldest running lottery being established already back in 1726 when Staatsloterij saw the light of day.

From there gambling became only more and more popular, in a subtle case of foreshadowing, calls for reduction of gambling related harm also grew stronger. This meant that the government took further steps of curbing unregulated gambling while allowing the state sanctioned lotteries to operate, with first regulations coming to power in 1851. We officially entered the modern age in 1964 when the first Wet op de Kansspelen, or Betting and Gambling Act, was introduced.

Once the gambling act was introduced, the next seismic event occurred in 1976 when the first state-owned brick and mortar casino, Holland Casino, opened in Zandvoort. This also ushered in the era of government monopoly on land based casinos, which was further reinforced by the 1996 regulation which made online gambling illegal.

However, the tidal wave of internet revolution was coming and a reform was needed. The Remote Gambling Act (Wet Kansspelen op afstand) was first proposed in 2012 and approved in 2019, finally coming into power in 2021. Once the market opened, there was no putting the toothpaste back into the tube and developments since have been nearly annual.

Spoiler alert; the regulations have not exactly relaxed.

The Dutch way or the highway

As you may have gathered already, the Dutch market is extremely tightly regulated and taxed, making it quite the minefield for operators and suppliers alike.

However, if you manage to navigate the strict Dutch requirements, operating pretty much anywhere else appears easy in comparison and holding a Dutch license truly indicates that you are technically, financially and regulatorily in a strong position as a company. This combined with the fact that the Netherlands is a wealthy nation, the market remains attractive to serious operators who trust their product and operations.

It should also not come as a surprise that the lead time to obtaining the license is quite a long one, approximately 6-9 months, so if you are after a quick and easy license, look elsewhere.

The initial fee is not the biggest one out there by any means, 48000 EUR, but there is also a 50000 EUR financial guarantee which any operator must provide. We also already mentioned the GGR-based taxation of B2C licensees which has gone up from 30.5% to 34.2% in 2025 all the way to 37.8% from the onset of 2026.

This hike was based on the assumption that higher tax rate would immediately result in a directly correlated increase in the tax revenue, which was not the case. For example, the increase from 30.5% to 34.2% was expected to bring in over 100mil EUR in additional revenue, but the actual increase was a mere 2 million. It is safe to say that the assumed additional 57mil tax revenue from the 2026 tax increase will almost certainly also fall spectacularly short of the estimate.

So the taxation is not favourable and the license is not easy to get, but what about technical requirements? It’s more rough going for the operators, as the player protection measures such as KYC, deposit limits, responsible gambling interventions and affordability checks to name a few are absolute non-negotiables in the Netherlands.

This is of course great from a safety and duty of care point of view, but if we focus strictly on business for a moment, having Dutch support who are ready to act on account closure requests within 60 minutes of receiving it available 24 / 7 / 365 means the initial investment on starting operations has to be substantial. Operators also either have to have a strong compliance partner (like BetComply) or a very knowledgeable in-house team who take care of Enhanced Due Diligence and other crucial matters to remain compliant.

The Netherlands has also established a national self-exclusion register, known as CRUKS (Centraal Register Uitsluiting Kansspelen) allowing players to prevent themselves from gambling in Dutch casinos. Operators of course have to check against this when players log in, ensuring excluded players cannot play.

The final technical peculiarity worth mentioning is the CDB (controledatabank) which means operators have to have a secure control database which KSA can read, and essentially audit the operator, at all times without having to contact them. This means the oversight can practically be continuous and happen in real-time, resulting in any breaches being detected swiftly. Again, great for regulatory oversight but a major technical headache for operators.

To supply or to not supply

Since you are a sharp individual by the virtue of reading this article, you would have gathered that the landscape is not the same for suppliers and operators.

The main difference between the two is that there is no B2B licensing as such, at least yet. Suppliers are however required to adhere to the same very strict regulations and only contract licensed operators. This means that the relationship is a two-way street, meaning that operators need to conduct due diligence and monitoring of their suppliers as they are liable for infractions due to a supplier on their platform.

From a technical point of view, suppliers have to adhere to similar requirements as operators, meaning that the services must be hosted in EU/EEA and that suppliers must also enable any relevant data from their side to be fed to the CDB so that KSA can access it on demand.

How much is too much?

We have already covered the tight player protection and taxation, but the impact this has on the market as a whole cannot be understated. KSA has been criticised for changing their regulations in quick succession without conducting proper investigation or estimates on how this affects the license holders.

In October 2024, KSA lowered the default monthly net deposit limits to 700 EUR for players over 24 and only 300 EUR for players between the ages of 24 and 18. The operators were only given four months of notice to adhere to the new changes, causing many to scramble to update their systems or to obtain external compliance support to remain compliant.

These are of course subject to affordability checks, something which was also tightened in July 2026 to only include monthly income, disregarding savings and assets which used to count towards the affordability of the player.

However, we must consider the fact that strong player protection means that operators gather a lot of information from their players including sensitive financial information in order to assess potential risk indicators. This means uploading copious documents and revealing information that some people are not comfortable sharing with anyone, let alone an online casino operator.

This level of scrutiny has started to act against its intended purpose as channelisation based on the operator GGR fell below 50% in the first half of 2025. This is an alarming number and while the number of players in the legal operators remains high (channelisation of 94%), the significant spend is done elsewhere. However, this number does not distinguish between players who only play in licensed casinos and players who are only registered in the Netherlands while spending big elsewhere.

Black market operators rarely ask questions and make it shockingly easy to create an account, sometimes requiring only an email address to do so. This is not only attractive for players who value privacy, but also for individuals who tend to spend impulsively, making them both prime targets for unlicensed casinos and the most vulnerable for gambling related harm.

This means that the potential tax income from these players and all control over the player protection measures (if there are any) lay elsewhere, but any costs to the society in the form of rehabilitation, harm reduction and social welfare all fall to the Dutch taxpayer.

An exemplary or a cautionary tale

On the surface, the approach which the Dutch politicians have taken seems like the right way to go in order to reduce gambling related harm and ensure that players do not play beyond their means which of course can cause major negative effects not just for them, but for the people around them as well.

However, what seems to have been lost along the way is the fact that most humans do not want to be controlled to the umpteenth degree and divulge sensitive details about their private lives to the extent which is required by the regulations. Especially in a country that leans towards the liberal in many ways.

As a result, the system has started to work against itself and people are voting with their feet, heading right into the arms of the Wild West of the unlicensed casinos; an outcome that is the exact opposite of what the regulations are trying to do.

The continuous political pressure makes it near impossible to ease the restrictions and make it easier for people to gamble, but if nothing is done, more and more people will head elsewhere and the revenue both for the licensed operators and the state continues to plateau.

With all this in mind, the indications are that the government is planning to double down on their approach with rumours swirling about a potential full advertising ban, cross-operator limits and other even stricter measures, further tightening the grip around the operators.

It looks like Kansspelautoriteit has themselves a nasty Catch-22 and only time will tell how it is resolved, if it even can be resolved