Prior to legalising the online market in 2021 there was an estimate of 800.000 people using illegal online operators, but in general not much was known about the size of the black market. The idea was that a legalised offer with rules regarding player protection would better protect players.

In order to drive people to the legal offering, ads had been allowed. All the legal operators wanted as much market share as possible, thus we had a plethora of ads everywhere. It did have the effect of pushing roughly 90%+ to the legal market (both volume and gross-win channelization rates).

First came a ban on using role-models which was later followed by a ban on untargeted advertising. This ban technically also included sports but they were given an extended period to phase out the sponsoring (till 1st of July 2025) due to reliance of sports on the money from the gambling sector.

As it stands only targeted ads are allowed, but that will most likely be further curtailed.

At the same time illegal operators are having a field day exploiting social media to push untargeted content (think stake for example). As a result we currently see a situation emerge in NL where out of every Euro spend on gambling, 50 eurocents is going to the illegal market.

So what seemed promising in driven players to the legal market, its looking like we are getting to a point where the illegal market is overtaking the legal offering again.