The Dutch state has decided that the best gambling advertisement is no gambling advertisement. In June, the cabinet proposed a near-total ban on online gambling advertising, with only narrow exceptions. The package assembled by Claudia van Bruggen, state secretary for legal protection, goes further still: an end to sign-up bonuses such as free bets, an overarching deposit limit spanning all operators, a strengthened CRUKS self-exclusion register and a promised clampdown on illegal activity.
“I find it particularly concerning that more and more people, and especially young people, have started gambling online and are getting into trouble as a result,” Van Bruggen said announcing the measures in June. “It is high time to reverse this trend.”
The proposal is less a new policy than the latest move in a gradual tightening. The Netherlands banned role models from gambling adverts, prohibited untargeted advertising from July 2023 and outlawed sports sponsorship from July 2025. Each measure was meant to be sufficient; officials have now concluded that none cut public exposure enough. When a medicine fails, The Hague’s instinct is to increase the dose.
The quiet death of channelisation in the Netherlands
Something more fundamental than the advertising rules has shifted. When the Dutch online market opened in 2021, the stated purpose of regulation was channelisation: steering players toward licensed, supervised operators.
Ask Justin Franssen, partner at Amsterdam gaming law firm Franssen Tolboom, whether that objective has been quietly abandoned, and his answer is clear: “Yes, I think it has – and actually, not even that quietly,” he says, noting that the former state secretary, Teun Struycken, had already alluded to the change. “The new mantra is the prevention of gambling harm.” The objective is no longer to channel existing players into the regulated market, but to shield players and non-players alike from gambling-related harm.
The timing of the retreat is telling, because by previous standards the policy is failing. The regulator, the KSA, has acknowledged that the legal market’s share of gross gaming revenue fell to roughly 49% in early 2025; trade bodies last year put the black market at around a quarter of all Dutch gambling activity. Licensed operators blame a gaming tax now at 37.8% of GGR – and the very advertising restrictions the government now wishes to complete.
Evidence, anyone?
What evidence suggests a total ban will succeed where partial ones failed? “It’s a very simple answer, there is no evidence,” says Franssen. “There is no evidence that it will succeed.” He points out that the KSA itself has expressed concerns about a total ban and advised against it.
It is a matter of numbers: most gambling advertising on Dutch social media is already illegal. “I would estimate that around 95% of those advertisements come from the black market,” Franssen says.
“There is no evidence [a total ad ban] will succeed”
Justin Franssen, partner Franssen Tolbloom
In June, trade association VNLOK sued Meta and lodged a complaint with the European Commission over a flood of illegal gambling adverts. In the final quarter of 2025 alone, VNLOK counted more than 70,000 gambling ads on Meta platforms, over 95% of them from unlicensed operators; less than 5% were removed. The KSA files thousands of complaints with Meta monthly; offending ads stay live for around a day and a half, then reappear under altered names. VNLOK now reckons the illegal Dutch market exceeds €1 billion a year – as large as the regulated one.
Ban the licensed half of that equation, Franssen argues, and the result writes itself: “What you ultimately achieve with a total ban is that you hand the entire stage to illegal operators while preventing licensed operators from informing consumers that a legal, regulated and protected alternative exists. In my view, it’s one of the worst policy ideas I’ve seen in many years.”
Postcards from Copenhagen and Rome
The Dutch are not the first to travel this road. Denmark – which considered and rejected a blanket ban – passed its own tightening package last October: a whistle-to-whistle ban on ads around live sport, prohibitions on public transport and near schools, no under-25s in marketing and an end to free-bet offers, phasing in by January 2027.
Yet even under mere restrictions, rather than prohibition, the Danish market is leaking. “The growth of the unlicensed market is massive,” says Morten Rønde, outgoing director of Danish online gambling association Spillebranchen. “The unlicensed market has grown almost exponentially over just three years and the channelisation rate has dropped from 90% to 70% in 2025.” It is a slide he attributes to advertising restrictions alongside high tax and limits on the games licensed operators may offer.
The mechanism, Rønde argues, is structural: restrictions bind only those who obey them. “While it limits the visibility of licensed operators it leaves the unlicensed operators untouched as we currently have no way of keeping the unlicensed operators from advertising on search engines and social media. So, unintentionally unlicensed operation is strengthened.”
Licensed firms, squeezed between each other and untaxed rivals, respond with what he calls “a negative spiral where the volume of advertising keeps growing”.
Illegal market in Italy is thriving
Italy ran the full experiment. Its Dignity Decree has imposed a near-total ban on gambling advertising and sponsorship since 2018, and Quirino Mancini, partner at WH Partners Italy, is withering about the results. The “Italian-style, draconian regulatory approach entailing an outright advertising ban” is, he says, “quite short-sighted and superficial and indeed highly likely not to achieve the scope of effectively tackling illegal gambling while protecting channelisation and the legal and licensed operators”.
Eight years on, he points to the “hard and undisputable fact” that illegal gambling in Italy is thriving – worth an estimated €22 billion. And the ban’s measurable impact on channelisation to the licensed market? “Very minimal indeed.”
Nor has the prohibition proven watertight. Its operational guidelines – written by Italy’s telecoms watchdog rather than its gaming regulator – left, Mancini notes, plenty of loopholes: the restrictions have been “skilfully navigated and legally played around”, through perfectly compliant sites that carry a gaming operator’s trading name and brand while offering only infotainment, odds comparison, sports news and live scores rather than real-money gambling.
The tools that actually worked
The irony is that Dutch policy contains its own counter-evidence. The deposit regime introduced in 2024 under Van Bruggen’s predecessor Franc Weerwind – loss limits of €150 a month for 18-to-23-year-olds and €350 for older players, with affordability checks at €300 and €700 in deposits – delivered measurable results. The share of players breaching their monthly allowance fell from 9.7% to 2.2%, and average monthly losses dropped 31%, from €116 to €80. Targeted, testable and effective: precisely the kind of instrument a harm-prevention agenda claims to want.
Franssen is careful not to dismiss the ambition. “The underlying idea is not necessarily bad. On the contrary, the objective is player protection, and that should absolutely be applauded.”
His concern is about the overall effect: successive advertising curbs, tax rises and mounting obligations have already pushed black-market GGR past the licensed market’s – an outcome the regulator itself has acknowledged. Pile on more, he warns, and “they will not improve the situation. On the contrary, they could very easily push even more players toward the black market. Ultimately, I think the proposals are likely to be counterproductive.”
Like quicksilver
The government’s answer to tackling the black market is enforcement: new tools for the KSA. Franssen is unmoved. “The black market is like quicksilver – it always finds a way around enforcement measures,” he says. He points out that it goes for both when it comes to avoiding to pay fines, or circumventing payment blocking or ISP blocking.
One consolation for licensed operators: a total ban requires primary legislation, which could take two years or more. But two years is also long enough for the trends already in motion – a growing black market and a channelisation rate stuck at around 50% – to deepen.
Asked whether the Dutch approach risks more than a regulated market can sustain, Mancini needs eight words: “Absolutely so. This is quite a safe bet.”
Rønde, watching from Copenhagen, offers the bleakest verdict on where the Dutch experiment ends. “Everything indicates that the Dutch policymakers have already gone too far,” he says. “When surveys show that the channelisation rate is down to 50%, this tells me that the market is already not working. However, it seems like some stakeholders are willing to put the last nail in the coffin and bury the hope of a viable gambling market.”
The Hague may yet discover that when the licensed market falls silent, the conversation about gambling does not stop. It simply moves somewhere the regulator cannot hear it.
荷兰政府已决定，最好的赌博广告就是没有赌博广告。今年6月，内阁提议近乎全面禁止在线赌博广告，仅保留少数例外。由法律保护国务秘书Claudia van Bruggen assembled的一揽子措施更进一步：终止免费投注等注册奖金、跨所有运营商的统一存款限额、强化CRUKS自我排除登记系统，并承诺打击非法活动。
“我尤其担忧的是，越来越多的人，特别是年轻人，开始在网上赌博并因此陷入困境，”Van Bruggen在6月宣布这些措施时表示。“现在是扭转这一趋势的时候了。”
该提案与其说是一项新政策，不如说是逐步收紧过程中的最新举措。荷兰禁止榜样人物出现在赌博广告中，自2023年7月起禁止非定向广告，并自2025年7月起取缔体育赞助。每一项措施本应足够；官员们如今得出结论，没有一项措施足以充分减少公众接触。当一种药物失效时，海牙的本能是加大剂量。
荷兰渠道化的悄然消亡
比广告规则更根本的东西已经发生了变化。当荷兰在线市场于2021年开放时，监管的既定目的是渠道化：引导玩家流向持牌、受监管的运营商。
问阿姆斯特丹博彩律师事务所Franssen Tolboom的合伙人Justin Franssen，这一目标是否已被悄然放弃，他的回答很明确：“是的，我认为已经放弃了——而且实际上，甚至算不上悄然，”他说，并指出前国务秘书Teun Struycken已经暗示了这一变化。“新的口号是预防赌博危害。”目标不再是引导现有玩家进入受监管市场，而是保护玩家和非玩家免受赌博相关危害。
这一退缩的时机很能说明问题，因为按照以往的标准，该政策正在失败。监管机构KSA已承认，合法市场在博彩总收入中的份额在2025年初降至约49%；行业机构去年估计黑市约占荷兰全部赌博活动的四分之一。持牌运营商将其归咎于目前占GGR 37.8%的博彩税——以及政府如今希望完成的那些广告限制。
证据呢？
有什么证据表明全面禁令能在部分禁令失败的地方取得成功？“答案很简单，没有证据，”Franssen说。“没有证据表明它会成功。”他指出，KSA本身也对全面禁令表示担忧，并建议不要实施。
这是一个数字问题：荷兰社交媒体上的大多数赌博广告已经是非法的。“我估计大约95%的这类广告来自黑市，”Franssen说。
“没有证据表明（全面广告禁令）会成功”
Justin Franssen，Franssen Tolbloom合伙人
今年6月，行业协会VNLOK起诉了Meta，并就大量非法赌博广告向欧盟委员会提出投诉。仅在2025年第四季度，VNLOK就在Meta平台上统计到超过70,000条赌博广告，其中超过95%来自无牌运营商；被删除的不到5%。KSA每月向Meta提交数千起投诉；违规广告大约存活一天半，然后以更改后的名称重新出现。VNLOK现在估计荷兰非法市场规模每年超过10亿欧元——与受监管市场一样大。
Franssen认为，禁止这个等式中的持牌一半，结果不言自明：“全面禁令最终实现的效果是，你把整个舞台拱手让给非法运营商，同时阻止持牌运营商告知消费者存在合法、受监管和受保护的替代选择。在我看来，这是我多年来见过的最糟糕的政策想法之一。”
来自哥本哈根和罗马的明信片
荷兰人并非第一个走上这条路的国家。丹麦——曾考虑并否决了全面禁令——于去年10月通过了自己的收紧方案：在体育赛事直播前后禁止广告、禁止在公共交通和学校附近投放广告、禁止25岁以下人群参与营销，以及终止免费投注优惠，将于2027年1月前分阶段实施。
然而，即使只是限制而非禁止，丹麦市场也在流失。“无牌市场的增长是巨大的，”丹麦在线赌博协会Spillebranchen即将卸任的主任Morten Rønde说。“无牌市场在短短三年内几乎呈指数级增长，渠道化率在2025年从90%降至70%。”他将这一下滑归因于广告限制以及高税收和对持牌运营商可提供游戏的限制。
Rønde认为，其机制是结构性的：限制只约束遵守限制的人。“虽然它限制了持牌运营商的可见度，但却让无牌运营商不受影响，因为我们目前无法阻止无牌运营商在搜索引擎和社交媒体上投放广告。因此，无意中反而强化了无牌经营。”
持牌公司夹在彼此和免税竞争对手之间，以他所谓的“广告量不断增长的恶性循环”来应对。
意大利非法市场蓬勃发展
意大利进行了完整的实验。其《尊严法令》自2018年起对赌博广告和赞助实施近乎全面的禁令，WH Partners Italy合伙人Quirino Mancini对结果评价犀利。他说，“意大利式的、包含彻底广告禁令的严厉监管方式”，“相当短视和肤浅，而且极有可能无法实现有效打击非法赌博、同时保护渠道化以及合法持牌运营商的目标”。
八年过去了，他指出一个“确凿且无可争辩的事实”：意大利的非法赌博正在蓬勃发展——估计价值220亿欧元。而该禁令对引导玩家流向持牌市场的可衡量影响？“确实微乎其微。”
该禁令也并非滴水不漏。Mancini指出，其操作指南——由意大利电信监管机构而非博彩监管机构撰写——留下了大量漏洞：这些限制已被“巧妙地规避并在法律上被玩弄”，通过完全合规的网站，这些网站带有博彩运营商的商号和品牌，但只提供信息娱乐、赔率比较、体育新闻和实时比分，而非真钱赌博。
真正有效的工具
讽刺的是，荷兰政策本身就包含反证。2024年在Van Bruggen的前任Franc Weerwind任内推出的存款制度——18至23岁人群每月150欧元的损失限额，年长玩家为350欧元，存款达到300欧元和700欧元时进行可负担性检查——取得了可衡量的成果。违反月度限额的玩家比例从9.7%降至2.2%，平均月度损失下降31%，从116欧元降至80欧元。有针对性的、可检验的且有效的：正是危害预防议程声称想要的那种工具。
Franssen谨慎地不否定这一雄心。“其基本理念未必不好。相反，目标是保护玩家，这绝对应该受到赞扬。”
他担心的是整体效果：接连不断的广告限制、税收上调和日益增加的义务，已经将黑市GGR推高至超过持牌市场——监管机构自己也承认了这一结果。他警告说，再加码更多措施，“不会改善局面。相反，它们很可能将更多玩家推向黑市。最终，我认为这些提案可能适得其反。”
如水银一般
政府应对黑市的办法是执法：为KSA提供新工具。Franssen不为所动。“黑市就像水银——总能找到绕过执法措施的办法，”他说。他指出，无论是逃避罚款，还是规避支付封锁或ISP封锁，都是如此。
对持牌运营商的一个安慰是：全面禁令需要主要立法，可能需要两年或更长时间。但两年也足以让已经在进行的趋势——不断增长的黑市和停滞在约50%的渠道化率——进一步加深。
当被问及荷兰的做法是否可能超出受监管市场所能承受的范围时，Mancini只用了八个字：“绝对如此。这是相当稳妥的判断。”
从哥本哈根观望的Rønde，对荷兰实验的最终结局给出了最悲观的评价。“一切都表明，荷兰政策制定者已经走得太远了，”他说。“当调查显示渠道化率降至50%时，这告诉我市场已经失灵了。然而，似乎一些利益相关者愿意钉上最后一颗棺材钉，埋葬一个可行博彩市场的希望。”
海牙或许终将发现，当持牌市场沉默时，关于赌博的对话并不会停止。它只是转移到了监管机构听不到的地方。