How is the market in the Netherlands shaping up since it became regulated in October 2021?
The Netherlands market has been open since 1 October 2021. A highly anticipated market, it took a lot longer than expected to regulate – almost 10 years. Now that the market is open, we’ve been faced with some unfortunate developments in the regulatory field. We have some of the strictest regulations in Europe but I think it’s good. It’s good to regulate the market very strictly. But what we see in the Netherlands now, and throughout last year, is that too much advertising led to a pushback on the industry from the Dutch population, which pushed politicians to clamp down on advertising.
Last year, I said there was going to be a ban on untargeted advertising for high-risk gambling. The process of this has now almost finished, resulting in a ban on targeted advertising for online gambling. This is slightly different from high-risk gambling because it doesn’t include land-based gambling, right? So land-based gambling will be excluded from this ban. Untargeted advertising means any advertisements on television, linear television and radio press – but the ban is only for online gambling. So land-based gambling can still advertise on television, radio, etc. But this creates a tilted playing field. So that’s the first problem.
The second problem is that you need to ensure advertising is still allowed. Let’s say the targeted advertising, which will take place online predominantly, does not get to vulnerable groups and vulnerable groups who are under 24. This will prove to be very hard because you cannot guarantee that members of a vulnerable group won’t see advertising for online gambling even if you target those who aren’t in a vulnerable group. So that’s another challenge. It’s worth noting that we haven’t seen the final text of the decree as it will be enacted. But we anticipate enactment by mid-March 2023, which will probably then come into force by 1 April or 1 May. But then it will be done and over for untargeted advertising. Another important thing to mention is that sponsoring television programmes and sports are still allowed; this may also become illegal under the targeted advertising law. As you can understand, sports clubs and federations aren’t too happy about that. This poses a direct threat to their financing, of course. At NOGA, we are surprised at the effects of channelisation. As it stands now, the amount of players betting legally in the Netherlands is 85%, which is a great success. This is certainly higher than some of the numbers we’ve seen from the likes of Sweden. But of course, we are now seeing the effects of regulations, especially as they’ve only been in place since 2021.
Is there a chance that operators present in the Netherlands are put off by impending advertising regulations... could they withdraw from the market? Is this a threat to positive channelisation rates?
Naturally, I would say that operators would be focusing on channelisation first. So if consumers get put off by too many regulations and marketing rules that are too strict, it’s bad. If you put too many locks on the door, don’t be surprised that people turn to the next door, right? That’s my first and only interest. So far, I haven’t seen too many companies bailing out of the Dutch market. I’m saying this with some stress, because it’s important to look at why they’re bailing. After all, it’s a sign of the market’s health. If big, recognised and trusted brands are saying, well, we’re not going into the Dutch market because there’s no viable business to be had there, then that is alarming because I think that will have its effect on channelisation eventually.
Loss limits could also be a big area when it comes to channelisation. Can you talk us through the latest on that area in the Netherlands?
“As it stands now, the amount of players betting legally in the Netherlands is 85%, which is a great success”
The current situation in the Netherlands is that the law says any operator with a licence has to offer the player a chance to set limits. That’s mandatory. But it doesn’t say anything about what the limit should be. So we ended up with a situation where some operators chose to just leave all the possibilities that the platform could provide a limit for. For instance, platform X could offer space for nine digits, so players could set a limit of 999,999.99, simply because that is the number of digits in the coding of the platform. That is not an effective limit. You know that’s not responsible gambling. Another example is that a player could set a time limit of 24 hours a day. That’s not a limit. It’s what I always call a limitless limit. This has led to pushback from the Dutch Parliament, which decided to look at Belgium to find a solution. Belgium has hard financial limits of €200 ($211) per month. I’m not sure whether the Netherlands is going to end up at €200; it seems rather arbitrary to me. It’s a huge issue that needs resolving, especially regarding enforcement monitoring. How will it work? I don’t know, and it doesn’t even include the regulations that will be coming for advertising. Of course, I’m concerned this might have a detrimental effect on channelisation. If this isn’t enough, there’s a third issue in the mix, and that’s the Netherlands’ high standards of duty of care. The Netherlands is one of the front-running jurisdictions when it comes to regulating duty of care in its laws and regulations. I think it was quite a new concept when we first started discussing this, but that was 10 years ago. There are more laws now that apply to providing a duty of care.
If you were to ask me to describe, in a sentence, what the duty of care is that you need to provide a customer, I would say it’s to make sure a player does not play too much, for their own good. And then you’ve got to ask, well, how much is too much for someone’s own good? When should you intervene? We don’t know. It has certainly not been laid down in legislation and regulations. Nobody knows exactly what falls under their duty of care. The only thing we can establish and agree on is when it goes wrong. If someone can play €100 and €50,000 within a short time frame, something has gone wrong with an operator’s duty of care to a customer. But I think that’s the wrong approach. It should be the other way around; it should be proactive. This is another area where we have to come up with a solution. These things all come from Parliament in the Netherlands.
At NOGA, we stand ready to work with the Government to increase our duty of care, because I think it’s a very important part of our legislation. It’s my wish that we achieve our aim of creating a clear framework of what a common understanding of the market consists of when to classify a gambler as a problem gambler and what a problem gambler is because every operator has a different answer. So we need to get this cleared up and agreed on. This is something that should not only be done in the Netherlands, it should be employed more unilaterally across Europe – but it doesn’t mean the Netherlands shouldn’t do it. You know, if you want to do easy work and you want to do easy business, you should not get into the gambling industry, and you certainly should not get into regulation because it’s far trickier and more complex than it may otherwise seem from the outside. There’s never a dull moment with regulation.
