*Disclaimer: Please note that parts of this blog have been automatically translated.*
For almost a decade, the Dutch government has been engaged in the process of legalizing online gambling. The Remote Gaming Act (KOA) went into effect on April 1, 2021, legalizing online gambling in the Netherlands. The reason for this?
To improve the protection of gamblers against scams and addiction1. Other countries preceded us and these figures do not lie. Almost all countries where online gambling is legal have seen an increase in gamblers, including many young people2 . Despite the high priority given to player protection, Belgium has recorded a record number of gambling addicts. A similar trend can be seen in Britain, where the number of gambling addicts has been rising rapidly since legalization2.
Interestingly, addiction prevention was the main argument for the legalization of online gambling in the Netherlands. The intention was to have strict requirements and standards for online gambling. In practice, however, these laws are not unambiguous3. For example, casinos must have an addiction prevention policy and intervene in case of problematic gambling behavior. The exact interpretation of this lies with the casinos themselves, so good will of the casinos must be relied upon4. Since casinos are not health promoters, it is mandatory to collaborate with addiction experts to draft these policies. However, this process is not independently funded, leading casinos to hire their own expert5. Moreover, one may question the extent to which casinos’ addiction prevention policies are objective.
A worrying trend is the growth in the number of young people gambling since legalization. In 2017, 9.8% of students gambled; by 2021, this will increase to 22.4%6. Despite ongoing research, hard evidence for the increase in gambling addictions is lacking, nevertheless addiction experts point to the inevitable increase in gambling addicts and problem players with growing player numbers7.
Figure 1 – Player accounts – (Monitoring Report on Online Gambling Spring 2023, 2023) 8
There are clear shortcomings in the protection of online gambling. How can this be improved? The industry association Dutch Online Gambling Association calls for binding duty-of-care guidelines9. In Belgium, among other changes implemented in 2019 are a weekly deposit limit of €500. In contrast, the Netherlands has a deposit limit at online casinos of €5000 per day10.
The government will need to establish stricter and clearer rules regarding the protection of gamblers. In addition, it is important that prevention measures are evaluated by external, independent researchers in order to properly track which interventions are effective and which are not11. At a minimum, standards for interventions and intervention results should be shared between casinos, government, addiction prevention organizations, knowledge institutions and universities. Without knowledge sharing, it will be difficult to effectively protect gamblers3. This requires joint efforts between casinos and strict regulation and support from the government.
This blog was written by Emma Moons for the Recent Developments in Risk Behavior course, master’s program PWO (Radboud University), 2023.References
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