KSA: Dutch iGaming up 28% for 2023; slower growth than 2022 – but not because of ad ban
This is the first monitoring report since the ban on untargeted advertising.
The Gaming Authority in the Netherlands, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has published its sixth monitoring report on the online gaming, analysing the legal market in 2023 in the country.
Though the report underlines that the online gambling market has grown again in 2023, with gross gaming result (BSR) increasing, this growth was less than that of 2022.
BSR for 2023 was €1.39bn ($1.51bn), up 28% from 2022, when it was €1.08bn. Growth has slowed considerably compared to 2022, although the KSA’s phrasing perhaps belies that 28% is still more than a ‘slight’ growth rate.
According to the KSA, the number of accounts used increased to 1.1 million in 2023 compared with 970,000 in the previous year. However, as pointed out in the report, players can use more than one account, so this number doesn’t always indicate the actual number of players.
In fact, it is estimated that around 448,000 players per month. The data also points out that in the second half of 2023, around 5% of the adult population in the Netherlands gambled online.
Looking at demographics, the KSA has reported that though 18-23-year-olds represent 9.5% of the population in the country, they represent 22% of the accounts.
New players have helped in the KSA’s efforts to ensure bettors play on the legal market, with 90% of all players only playing through legal websites.
This monitoring report is of course the first since the ban came into effect in July relating to untargeted advertising. The report suggests the ban hasn’t had much of an effect and, in terms of visits to gambling websites, this has mainly affected people who do not already participate in online gambling.
In February, the KSA released its 2023 report on match-fixing, showing that the number of reported suspicious sports competitions from operators had sharply declined.
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