What the Ksa will reveal at EASG 2026
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3 Aug 2026 •
Reading time: 3 minutes
The Kansspelautoriteit (Ksa) will take part in the 15th European Conference on Gambling Studies and Policy (EASG 2026), to be held in Copenhagen from 8 to 11 September 2026. At the event, the regulator will present three papers focusing on player protection, the ban on sports sponsorship by online gambling operators, and a new method for estimating the scale of the illegal online gambling market.
A conference focusing on the sector’s key challenges
Every year, the European Association for the Study of Gambling’s conference brings together researchers, regulatory authorities, operators and prevention specialists to discuss developments in the sector. The 2026 edition will be held under the theme ‘From Barriers to Bridges’, featuring nearly a hundred presentations focusing in particular on responsible gambling, regulation, artificial intelligence, prediction markets, match-fixing and illegal gambling offerings.
For Pieter Remmers, Secretary General of the EASG, the aim of this meeting is to foster dialogue amongst all relevant stakeholders.
“It’s about learning from one another, without excluding anyone. It is essential to maintain dialogue and for each party to fulfil its responsibilities.”
New Dutch rules at the heart of the discussions
One of the Ksa’s key presentations will focus on the effects of the new responsible gambling rules that came into force in the Netherlands on 1 October 2024. Their aim is to strengthen player protection by requiring operators to take further action when certain thresholds are reached.
The new provisions relate in particular to deposit limits. Operators must intervene when a player reaches certain levels of net deposits. The ceiling is set at 700 euros, whilst a lower threshold of 300 euros applies to young adults.
To assess the impact of these regulations, the KSA draws on data from its monitoring database, which licence holders are required to contribute to. This database compiles information on more than one million player accounts each month.
In particular, researchers analyse transactions, changes to betting limits and interventions carried out by operators. The research also examines compliance with the new obligations, trends in players’ losses, the number of days spent gambling, the size of the legal market and operators’ potential reliance on a small proportion of players.
A look back at the ban on sports sponsorship
A second presentation will focus on the ban on sports sponsorship by online gambling operators.
Since 1 July 2025, these companies have been prohibited from appearing on the shirts of professional clubs or in stadiums, or from sponsoring competitions or sports federations. This measure follows on from the broader ban on non-targeted gambling advertising, introduced in 2023. At that time, sports sponsorship was granted a transitional period to allow existing contracts to be phased out gradually.
Measuring a market that eludes statistics
The third topic presented by the KSA concerns a challenge faced by many regulatory authorities: how to assess the size of the illegal online gambling market when the operators in question do not publish any data?
To answer this question, a KSA analyst will present a method based on the volume of Google searches.
The authority examined the link between these search volumes and the gross gaming revenue of legal operators, combining this with available information on part of the illegal market. This approach enabled the development of a method to estimate the overall size of the market. According to the results to be presented, the channelling rate calculated on the basis of gross gaming revenue was less than 60 per cent in 2025. The Ksa also estimates that more than one billion euros are wagered each year at illegal online casinos.
A focus on sharing experience
Through these three presentations, the Ksa aims to share the lessons learnt from its work with researchers, other regulatory authorities and industry representatives attending the conference in Copenhagen.
The EASG 2026 conference is therefore expected to provide a forum for discussion where research findings will inform deliberations on the future direction of European gambling regulation.