Facts on regulation
Article series
European Gambling RegulationPart 1 of 4
Balancing the Odds: British and Dutch Gambling Regulation
Channelisation, player protection and the limits of a two-market comparison (2021–2025)
Britain and the Netherlands offer contrasting histories of regulated online gambling. Both seek to protect players and keep activity within licensed markets, but their rules and evidence bases differ.
This comparison examines developments through October 2025. Its central question is how to judge the balance between protection inside the legal market and the risk of activity moving outside it. Channelisation helps answer that question, provided the figures measure the same thing.
A comparison of the UK and Netherlands gambling regulations from 2021 to 2025.
Why compare Britain and the Netherlands?
Great Britain’s licensing system operates under the Gambling Act 2005 and the Gambling Commission. References here to Britain concern England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland has a separate legal framework.
The Dutch Remote Gambling Act came into force on 1 April 2021, with the licensed online market opening on 1 October that year. A newer market and a longer-established one can offer useful lessons, but they are not a controlled experiment. Product availability, taxation, consumer habits and measurement methods all differ.
Regulatory changes may influence where people gamble. Establishing how much they influence behaviour requires more than observing that rules and market shares changed at similar times.
What channelisation measures
Channelisation describes the share of a market served by licensed operators. Reports may calculate it by players, stakes or gross gambling revenue (GGR). GGR is stakes minus winnings paid back to players; it is not turnover or total deposits.
A high share of players using licensed sites can coexist with a lower licensed share of revenue if a smaller group loses comparatively large sums outside the regulated sector. Channelisation is therefore one indicator of regulatory performance, alongside evidence about harm, enforcement and consumer outcomes.
Britain: reform and an uncertain black-market estimate
The statutory gambling levy commenced on 6 April 2025, replacing voluntary arrangements for the amount contributed to research, prevention and treatment. Consumer-control reforms were also being phased in: prompts to set a financial limit before a first deposit were due to take effect on 31 October 2025, rather than already applying throughout the year.
A 2024 study by Frontier Economics, commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council, estimated £2.7 billion in annual online stakes with unregulated operators, or about 2.1% of online stakes. The estimate combined a survey with customer data. It was an industry-commissioned estimate, not an official count of the black market.
That stakes-based measure cannot be directly compared with a Dutch revenue-based percentage. Nor does it establish that particular British reforms caused channelisation to remain high.
COMPARISON CHECK
British online stakes and Dutch gross gambling revenue are different denominators. Presenting them as a single ranking would create false precision.
The Netherlands: protection and channelisation
Dutch measures included restrictions on untargeted advertising and strengthened player-protection requirements. The gambling tax rate rose from 30.5% to 34.2% in January 2025, with a further rise to 37.8% scheduled for January 2026 under the government’s tax plan.
The Ksa’s October 2025 monitoring release reported €600 million in licensed online GGR for the first half of 2025. Its estimate at that time put licensed GGR channelisation at 49%, while approximately 94% of players used only licensed sites. The report’s estimate of €617 million for unlicensed GGR referred to the same six-month period, not a full year.
These figures described different aspects of the market. They did not show that most Dutch players had moved offshore. The regulator also reported lower average losses in the legal sector and regarded the protective effect of the rules as part of the explanation for lower licensed revenue.
Later revision: The Ksa subsequently revised the first-half 2025 licensed GGR share to 56%. The earlier 49% estimate should therefore not be treated as the current estimate for that period, or as settled evidence that illegal revenue exceeded legal revenue.
PLAYER PROTECTION AND MARKET SHARE
The Ksa’s February 2025 evaluation found fewer high-loss accounts after the new rules. It also warned that heavy gamblers might move to unlicensed operators. Those two possibilities need to be assessed together.
What the comparison can establish
The evidence illustrates a trade-off to investigate, rather than proving that one regulatory model has succeeded and another failed. Rules can reduce harmful spending within licensed markets while creating incentives for some customers to seek unrestricted alternatives.
To assess that balance, policymakers need comparable periods, consistent definitions and transparent methods, alongside evidence on the people affected. Changes in modelled black-market estimates should be distinguished from observed movement by individual players.
Reading the figures: Frontier’s British estimate concerns annual online stakes. The Dutch monitor concerns GGR and player activity in the first half of 2025. The amounts, periods and methods are not interchangeable.
A comparison without a misleading league table
- Britain: a commissioned estimate of unregulated online stakes, based on survey and customer data.
- Netherlands: licensed-operator revenue combined with an estimate of unlicensed revenue; a separate measure tracks players.
- For both: uncertainty and revisions matter. Neither measure alone establishes the level of harm or the effect of a specific regulation.
Conclusion
Britain and the Netherlands show why channelisation belongs in the policy debate—and why it needs careful definition. Protecting players within licensed markets and limiting unlicensed activity are connected objectives, but a single percentage cannot demonstrate whether both are being achieved.
A useful comparison asks what changed, for whom, over which period and according to which measure. It does not rank regulatory systems using incompatible statistics.
Sources and further reading
- Frontier Economics: the scale of black-market gambling in Great Britain (2024 study).
- Kansspelautoriteit: Remote Gambling Act in force, 1 April 2021.
- Kansspelautoriteit: autumn 2025 market monitoring, 13 October 2025.
- Kansspelautoriteit: initial evaluation of new player-protection rules, 14 February 2025.
- Kansspelautoriteit: later explanation of revised 2025 channelisation figures.
- Gambling Commission: statutory levy introduction.
- Gambling Commission: financial-limit implementation dates, 7 October 2025.
Correction — 14 October 2026: We corrected the Dutch law’s commencement date and the timing of British financial-limit prompts, distinguished stakes, GGR and player-based channelisation, and added the Ksa’s later revision of its first-half 2025 estimate. We removed an unsupported British channelisation range, an unverified quotation, a misleading infographic and claims that regulatory changes had been proved to cause the reported market outcomes. The analysis otherwise retains its original October 2025 context.