What can an AI analytics platform reveal about two regulated markets? A case study across the UK and the Netherlands

The Blask Index for the UK over twelve months to April 2026, showing local licensed operators at 96.77% of total player search interest against 1.67 million monthly interactions for international brands at 3.23%. Source: Blask (blask.com). Figures are Blask estimates based on search activity.

What the platform shows at market level: the same problem at very different scales

The first thing an operator opening Blask's market overview for the UK and the Netherlands sees is the Blask Index split — a chart that divides total player search interest between locally licensed operators and international brands. In the UK, the gap between the two is so large it is almost not a comparison.

According to Blask, UK players directed 50.12 million monthly search interactions toward locally licensed operators in April 2026, against 1.67 million toward international brands — a 96.77% to 3.23% split. The line representing international interest on Blask's UK chart runs along the bottom of the chart as a near-flat trace. It has not moved meaningfully in twelve months.

The Netherlands chart is different in kind, not just degree. Local licensed operators recorded 5.99 million monthly search interactions in April 2026, against 929,800 for international brands — an 86.57% to 13.43% split. The international line is visible. It has held its level across the same twelve-month period and risen slightly as the licensed market contracted in early 2026.

The raw ratio between the two markets is approximately four to one. UK offshore demand sits at 3.23% of total search interest; Netherlands offshore demand at 13.43%. Both figures come from the same platform, the same methodology, and the same reporting period.

Blask assigns each market a maturity index score — a composite measure of market development. The UK scores 7.05; the Netherlands 5.59. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between a market with more than two decades of continuous licensed operation and one that opened in October 2021. 

The brand counts in both markets need context before they are cited. Blask tracks 135 international brands in the UK and 239 in the Netherlands. Both figures are larger than the active offshore presence in each market. Blask's brand tracker flags brands that are no longer actively operating with a red indicator — brands that generate search interest because players look for them but that are not currently open for business. A separate flag identifies brands that have entered within the previous three months. Of the 135 international brands tracked in the UK during Q1 2026, only one was a new entrant and no new licensed brands appeared. That tells its own story: the UK market is not being actively entered by new offshore operators. It is being maintained, at a thin but stable level, by operators already present.

In the Netherlands, Blask also identifies whether each brand operates across digital channels, physical venues, or both. Of the 29 licensed operators active as of April 2026, the market is almost entirely digital — relevant context for an operator with a slots and live casino product assessing where it would sit in the competitive landscape.

What the deeper data reveals: when players look one way and money flows another

The Blask Index measures search interest — where players direct their attention. It does not measure where they deposit. In both markets, those two things diverge, and the gap between them is where the channelisation problem in the Netherlands becomes fully visible.

In the UK, licensed operators command approximately 97% of consumer search interest. One structural explanation for that dominance, as Makarochkina explained during the demonstration session, is marketing access.

Licensed operators in the UK can advertise on television, sponsor sports events, and appear in outdoor campaigns. Offshore operators cannot. That access advantage means licensed brands occupy more of a player's attention than their revenue share alone would require — the search interest figure naturally runs ahead of the money split. According to Blask's Competitive Earning Baseline estimates — a modelled projection derived from brand awareness and activity data, calibrated against published regulatory figures — licensed UK operators hold approximately 88% of total estimated market revenue against their 97% share of search interest. That nine-point gap is the marketing access effect made visible in data.

In the Netherlands the same dynamic applies: licensed operators can advertise, offshore operators cannot, and the 86.57% search interest figure for licensed brands reflects that advantage. But the revenue picture diverges sharply. According to the KSA's own spring 2026 monitoring report, channelisation by money staked stands at 53%. Blask's CEB estimates for the same period put the licensed share of potential revenue at 64%, against 36% for international operators — a figure that has deteriorated by three percentage points over the preceding twelve months. The KSA and Blask figures use different methodologies and measure different things; they should not be read as equivalent. What they share is a direction: in both datasets, the licensed market's share of money is materially lower than its share of attention, and the gap has been widening.

The KSA's spring 2026 report, covering the second half of 2025, provides the regulatory view of the same picture. The legal online gambling market has stopped growing. Licensed operator gross gaming revenue for the second half of 2025 was €602 million — barely changed from €600 million in the first half, and approximately 18% lower than the equivalent period in 2024. The number of active players, licence holders, and the channelisation rate have all remained flat since the previous report.

What the combined data suggests is a conversion problem, not a visibility problem. Dutch players are finding licensed operators. They are choosing, at a meaningful rate, to place their money elsewhere. The most plausible structural explanation is that the offshore offer is more attractive at the margin that matters most to the highest-spending players: no deposit limits, no income verification, no advertising restrictions that otherwise keep offshore brands out of mainstream channels.

The gap between where Dutch players look and where their money goes is approximately 33 percentage points. That is not a visibility problem. It is a conversion problem.

The KSA's own industry body, VNLOK, has stated publicly that the scale of the illegal market in terms of player numbers is likely being underestimated. The regulator's player-based channelisation figure — approximately 91% of Dutch gamblers using only licensed operators — rests on a panel of approximately 300 online players, a sample size the KSA itself describes with reservations. When the 91% player figure and the 53% money figure are read alongside each other, the implication is that the players moving to the offshore market are not casual or occasional gamblers. They are the highest-value segment — and in an unregulated environment, the segment most exposed to harm.

What hourly data gives an operator that a twice-yearly report cannot — and where it stops

The KSA publishes its monitoring reports twice a year. The spring 2026 report, covering the second half of 2025, appeared in April 2026. An operator that needed to understand what happened to the Netherlands market in January 2026 could not find that in a regulatory document until three months after the fact. Blask's index updated as it happened.

This is the core operational difference a search-based platform offers. The Blask Index updates hourly, drawing on Google search data processed through Blask's methodology — a system that mines search keywords in local languages, applies a computer vision layer to identify iGaming brands from homepage screenshots, uses a language model to filter out affiliates, and validates the output through human review.

The result is a demand signal rather than a revenue record: it shows where player interest is flowing before it translates into deposits, tracked week by week across any market the platform covers. Used consistently, it functions as a first-layer monitoring instrument — not a substitute for regulatory data, but an early signal that surfaces shifts in the demand picture before the next published report arrives.

The January 2026 demand cliff in the Netherlands is the clearest illustration of that value. On 1 January 2026, the Netherlands gambling tax increased from 34.2% to 37.8% — the third consecutive annual rise, from 30.5% in 2024. The Blask Index for the Netherlands shows the effect within the same month: a sharp drop from the December 2025 peak of approximately 620,000 monthly category interactions to approximately 470,000 in January 2026, followed by a continued decline through April to approximately 410,000. Blask's market explanation feature — currently in beta — attributes the January trough directly to the tax increase, noting that it resulted in reduced wagering and less generous operator offers. The KSA report covering the same period was published three months later.

The March 2026 KSA advertising guidance is a second example. On 18 March 2026, the KSA issued new guidance reinforcing the ban on untargeted gambling advertising, further restricting the marketing tools available to licensed operators. Blask's market explanation flags this as dampening marketing-led uplift in March — a regulatory event that suppressed licensed operator visibility in the same month that offshore brands, unaffected by the guidance, continued without restriction.

The category and game-level data adds a further dimension that no regulatory document contains. The Netherlands is structurally a live dealer demand market operating inside a slots catalogue. Online Casino is the largest category by Blask Index at 3.39 million interactions, up 6.92% year on year. But Blask's game-level analysis shows that blackjack commands nearly a fifth of all Dutch player search interest — the single largest share of any title — while slots account for over 83% of the licensed catalogue by title count. According to Blask's Netherlands casino lobby analysis, the Pirots franchise from Elk Studios occupies second and fourth position in the player demand rankings despite appearing nowhere in the distribution or lobby rankings for the same market. The shelf and the player have been out of sync since the market opened. For the operator assessing entry with a strong live casino product, that is a positioning signal worth having months before any regulatory survey would capture it.

What the platform cannot tell the operator is equally important to state. Blask's figures are modelled estimates based on search activity; they are not reported revenue, verified player counts, or regulatory compliance data. The methodology rests on Google search as its primary signal, which means it captures intent — what players look for — rather than behaviour — what they do after they find it. The brand counts require the red-indicator caveat every time they are cited. The market explanation feature that contextualises index movements is in beta, and the platform itself notes the difficulty of attributing precise magnitude to individual drivers. An operator using Blask as its sole source of market intelligence would be missing the regulatory filing data, the player protection incident records, the licence condition details, and the enforcement history that primary regulatory sources provide.

Used alongside those sources — as this case study has done — the platform adds a layer of near-real-time demand intelligence that has genuine operational value. The operator assessing Netherlands market entry in May 2026 does not need to wait for the autumn KSA report to know that the licensed market contracted in Q1 2026, that a tax increase on 1 January suppressed demand within the month, and that the live dealer category is structurally underserved relative to what Dutch players actually search for. Blask showed all three things. The regulatory report will confirm them later.