Due to the epidemic, the Dutch Gambling Authority, Kansspelautoriteit, revealed that total gaming revenue within its casino vertical virtually dropped in 2020. 

Dutch casino vertical cools down in 2020

The KSA said in its periodic market analysis for country-specific games of chance until 2022 that revenue for Holland Casino, the state-backed gambling monopoly, had “plummeted considerably” in 2019 and 2020.

During this time period, the sector accounted for 10.7 percent of the Dutch market in 2019, totaling €288.9 million, and 6.4 percent in 2020, totaling €124.7 million. Holland Casino outlets, in the example, contributed €158.9 million in gaming machine net revenue in 2020, with an additional €506.2 million generated by the food business and arcades. In all, gaming machine revenues totaled €665.1 million, which, like casino revenues, marked a “near-halving” decrease from the €1.19 billion earned in 2019.

The research also revealed similar tendencies in relation to lottery and slot machine revenue, which stayed “about the same size” in both 2019 and 2020, prompting the KSA to declare that the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic was “clearly obvious” in these verticals. In addition, the KSA stated that “years of growth” in the Dutch gaming business ended in 2019 and 2020. In the latter year, gross gaming revenue from chance games decreased by €700 million from the previous year.

In addition, net gaming revenue declined from €2.7 billion in 2019 to €1.9 billion in 2020, despite the fact that lotteries and slot machines continued to dominate the industry – accounting for 43.1% and 43.7% of the market, respectively, in 2019. Despite this, the regulator reported that revenue from this segment of the gambling market increased significantly over this period, growing from €339 million in 2019 to €369 million in 2020.

If we focus exclusively on lotteries, the National Postcode Lottery and the State Lottery topped the market, accounting for 36.3 percent and 33.7 percent of total revenue, respectively. In terms of Dutch player characteristics, the survey indicated that the average Dutch better spends slightly more on games of chance than other European markets, at €221 in 2019 compared to €165 in 2019.

COVID-19 effect still lingers

However, the KSA expected that the average spend on gambling machines in the Netherlands will continue to decline in the future as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, and particularly as more people turn to online options following the opening of the KOA. On the other hand, online casino revenue is likely to continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace due to the addition of 11 new operators with Dutch licenses.