The chair of the Dutch gambling trade body has warned operators could leave the market amid tax and regulatory headwinds in the Netherlands
Speaking to EGR, VNLOK chair Björn Fuchs said licensed operators are working under “severe constraints” in the market.
Those constraints include the tax rate jumping from 30.5% to 34.2% in January 2025, before hitting the final rate of 37.8% this January.
Marketing and deposit restrictions are also in place in the Netherlands, which only regulated its online arena in October 2021.
This week, VNLOK released a study which showed the tax take in 2025 was down 13%, meaning licensed operator paid €43.5m less in tax than in 2024.
Fuchs suggested some politicians in the Netherlands would like to see gambling “taxed into the grave”, as he laid out his concerns to EGR.
He said: “I think the last batch of licence holders entered the market under severe constraints. You don’t have a well-known brand and you have to fight your way into a market purely using affiliates, which usually already have sold their prime positions, and SEO.
“If you have a limited number of marketing channels, getting that position in the market is probably difficult. I believe that either parties will start to cooperate or merge with other parties, or they will leave the market.
“It is safe to say that the gambling industry is like an ATM for the yearly budget. When they need a few 100 million euros, they just crank up the gambling tax. Gambling doesn’t have any friends in parliament, so there won’t be any member of parliament opposing it.”
The Netherlands has already seen tombola and LiveScore Bet exit the market since its regulation almost five years ago.
The Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) published data in October which showed the black market had overtaken the regulated sector in terms of GGR.
With the UK set to hike remote gaming duty to 40% in April, and remote general betting duty to 25% in April 2027, Fuchs said the Netherlands is a case study in poor policy.
Fuchs added: “Currently the stress on the industry is enormous. There is a sweet spot in taxation, and if you miss the sweet spot, you will eventually start having less tax revenues.
“The current numbers show they are way past the sweet spot at this point, and that’s purely from a financial point of view. I think that if you look from a policy point of view, with regard to the policy goals, we are also way beyond the sweet spot, basically because the black market at this point is still exceeding the regulated one.
“The numbers show without a doubt that if you squeeze the regulated offering into a corner where they cannot compete based on an attractive and visible product, then any legal ecosystem will lose to the black market, which eventually will be a loss for society.
“As Peter-Paul de Goeij, the former chair of [previous trade body] NOGA, has said, you could speak of [it as] a Dutch disease, and the UK should not get infected with it.”
Alongside the study, VNLOK has asked the Dutch parliament to provide an evaluation of the tax hikes and understand the relationship between duty increases and the black market in future policy decisions.
The post Dutch trade body chief warns operators could leave the Netherlands first appeared on EGR Intel.
Björn Fuchs tells EGR tax hikes and other burdens could see consolidation as well as exits, after report shows 2025 tax take projected to be down 13% YoY
The post Dutch trade body chief warns operators could leave the Netherlands first appeared on EGR Intel.