About 365,000 players gamble on online games of chance every month. More than 60 percent of them have started gambling since the government pulled the online gambling market out of illegality at the end of 2021 so that it can be regulated. The remaining 40 percent was already gambling, but illegally. That reported the Gaming Authority (Ksa) on Wednesday. The number of accounts rose in the last half of 2022 from over 565,000 to 859,000. The average gambler lost about 143 euros per month in 2022. The online gambling companies earned about 1.1 billion euros from this.
The gross gaming result of legal gambling websites, the bet minus prizes paid, was 90 million euros in January last year. Last January that was 124 million euros. The Ksa expects a growth of 13 to 15 percent per year. It is therefore clear that the gambling market is growing, but according to the gambling watchdog, legalization is achieving its intended result. When the legal online gambling market was opened up, the government’s goal was to have 8 out of 10 players gamble at legal websites.
Objective achieved
That goal is amply achieved: 92 percent of players gambles legally, and of the new players who have started since the legalization even 98 percent gambles legally. The promise of the 80 percent target was that gambling addictions could be monitored and stopped. But according to the Ksa it is still unclear whether the new gambling policy will actually have a positive or negative effect on gambling addictions, and it will take years before the results can be analysed.
The legalization dossier creates dilemmas for politicians. The fact that the inveterate gamblers come within sight of the regulator is a great advantage. But legalization also makes vulnerable groups such as young people more easily exposed, especially because advertising is now allowed.
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Recently, Minister Franc Weerwind (Legal Protection, D66) announced that untargeted advertisements for gambling, such as on billboards, television and radio, will be banned from 1 July. “With this ban, vulnerable groups, especially young people, come into less contact with these advertisements and we limit the temptation to start high-risk games of chance,” said the minister. A majority of the House of Representatives put pressure on the minister with research by addiction experts to introduce this advertising restriction. In the run-up to the ban, the number of advertisements on television will decrease, but online advertisements will increase.
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