Floor van Bakkum: spelersbescherming moet kern van regulering zijn

Thank you for inviting me.

Gambling is not an ordinary commodity. It is not like selling shoes or books. These are products and environments designed around human reward mechanisms, impulsivity, repetition, and behavioral reinforcement.

I learned that long before I started working for the Netherlands gambling authority. For more than 20 years I worked in addiction care and prevention. I spoke with people who had lost everything; money, relationships, sleep and control

This experience fundamentally shaped the way I look at gambling. 

Gambling products are not ordinary consumer products because the societal costs and health harms extend far beyond the individual consumer. Every day, people get trapped, lose control, and pay a price: financially, socially, and emotionally. The online environment makes it easier than ever: fast platforms, push notifications, personalized offer. All designed to keep people gambling. 

The moment we acknowledge gambling is not an ordinary commodity, player protection stops being just another obligation. It becomes central to whether society continues to support the legal market at all. Because modern gambling environments are not simply passive marketplaces responding to demand. They actively shape demand. With ggressive marketing campaigns, constant visibility, and the normalization of gambling. This especially affect young people and vulnerable groups. 

 The question is not only how it serves people who are actively looking for gambling products. It is also how many people are encouraged, persuaded or repeatedly nudged into gambling who otherwise might not have gambled at all.

People ask me why I moved from addiction care and prevention into regulation. The answer is actually quite simple.  I realized that if we truly want to reduce gambling related harm, we must influence the system itself, not only support the people already harmed by it. Support and treatment matter a great deal. But by the time people arrive in addiction care, harm has already escalated for years. According to recent data from LADIS, in 2025 more than 3,100 people were seeking help for gambling addiction. This is a 13 percent increase compared to 2024. This increase is primarily due to people experiencing problems as a result of online gambling. Make no mistake this is just the tip of the iceberg. And that raises a more fundamental question: What kind of gambling environment are we creating in the first place? When large numbers of people repeatedly experience harm in the same gambling environments, that is not merely a collection of individual failures. It is also a signal that something in the system itself requires adjustment.

There is a growing recognition that player protection should not sit at the margins of gambling regulation. It should be one of its central objectives. This shift is also reflected within the Netherlands Gambling Authority itself, where recent strategic and organisational changes have placed player protection much more firmly at the centre of our work.

Today I am here to call on you: player protection cannot be the closing paragraph of a business strategy. It must be the starting point. The question for this sector is not whether protection matters. The question is whether you are willing to take it seriously and to act before harm actually occurs. 

At the beginning of this year, an investigation of the program Zembla showed something alarming: popular streamers, many with huge followings of young people, were promoting gambling platforms, even legal ones, despite explicit bans. This example shows something troubling: it’s not only illegal operators who keep pushing the boundaries.Legal providers have also, at times, tested the boundaries of regulation.  Every time this happens, the sector chips away at the trust society places in it. Trust that, once lost, is extremely hard to regain.

When people hear the term “gambling harm”, many still think only about severe addiction. The stereotype: someone who has lost everything. Extreme debts. Crisis.

During my years in addiction care, I met many people who did not fit the stereotype. Many never imagined this could happen to them. And often, harm was invisible for a long time. Work continued, social life continued, while debts, stress, and shame quietly escalated. 

Our understanding of gambling harm is changing. The Lancet Public Health Commission has shown that it’s not just about the vulnerable person everyone talks about. Harm exists on a spectrum: financial stress, sleepless nights, fights at home, mental health struggles, problems at work, stress in families, kids growing up in unstable environments.

And here’s the tricky part: harm often starts small. Quiet. Invisible. Long before anyone says, “there’s a problem”. If interventions in gambling environments only focus on the extremes, its too late. Way too late. 

Gambling often shifts from entertainment to a coping mechanism. Not because people are weak, but because modern gambling environments are extremely effective at keeping players engaged. 

I still hear discussions framed almost entirely around “player freedom”. Of course personal freedom matters. But we should not ignore the contradiction that exists when an industry speaks about freedom while simultaneously investing heavily in technologies that are specifically designed to reduce friction and increase repetition.

This brings me to a central point: player protection is not only about personal responsibility. It is about the environment: products, interfaces, speed, accessibility, notifications, bonuses, personalization, friction. Or lack thereof. Modern online gambling environments are highly optimized behavioral systems. They are designed to attract attention, increase repetition, extend play, and stimulate return

Too often, players are framed as if their behavior alone determines harm. But many elements of the environment are designed to keep players engaged and encourage continued gambling. Young adults are particularly vulnerable. And online gambling now operates at a speed and intensity unlike anything we’ve seen before: always available, integrated into smartphones, livestreams, influencers, and social media timelines. Visibility and marketing normalizes gambling, especially among younger audiences.

Individual interventions remain important. At the Netherlands Gambling Authority, we invest in prevention, early identification, independent information and practical tools that help people avoid or reduce gambling-related harm. This includes further developing and promoting “Open over Gokken”, strengthening national and local early identification through the Partnership for Early Detection of Gambling Harm, investing in prevention initiatives aimed at higher-risk groups, and making free blocking software available later this year to help people block access to both legal and illegal gambling websites.

But this cannot compensate for gambling environments that systematically generate risk. Prevention starts with the environment itself: products, design, marketing, accessibility and friction.

The same behavioral systems used to maximize engagement can also be used to protect people against harm. Operators now have unprecedented insight into player behavior. Often noticing risky patterns way before families, friends, or even the player themselves. You can see escalation patterns emerge in realtime. Night-time gambling, increasing deposits, loss chasing, abrupt changes in behavior. Not every signal means addiction but it could indicate  the beginning of gambling harm. These signals require earlier intervention. Because when severe harm finally becomes visible its already too late

Duty of care cannot remain a paper exercise. It must be operational: earlier intervention, meaningful friction, active monitoring, active referral to support, and use of data for prevention instead of for optimization. Frankly, I believe the industry still underestimates how much responsibility comes with possessing this level of behavioral intelligence. With great predictive power comes great moral responsibility.

It is often said that stronger protection drives players to illegal operators.  Illegal markets are real, yes. The Netherlands gambling authority is doing everything in its power to address this issue and to prevent illegal operators to access the Dutch market. This is a huge challenge,. Illegal operators are a serious problem. But a regulated market is not legitimized simply because it is legal. It is legitimized because society believes it is safer and more responsible than the illegal alternative.

And there is another important consideration. Discussions about channelization often focus on the players who might leave the legal market. But not every player confronted with friction turns to the illegal market. For many, protection works exactly as intended: they gamble less, start later, or do not gamble at all.

We need to be careful that we do not turn the existence of illegal gambling into a universal argument against stronger protection. Because then we risk creating a very dangerous logic: that every meaningful protective measure immediately becomes “unwise” because illegal competition exists. If we follow that logic consistently, player protection will always lose the argument. The existence of illegal operators should push the legal market to become more trustworthy not less protective. 

I have never supported a total ban on gambling. Years of experience with high-risk or illegal products taught me that prohibition rarely makes demand disappear. People seek excitement, risk, and reward. That reality requires regulation and protection, not denial.

But acknowledging that prohibition is not the answer does not justify unlimited persuasion or continuously nudging players toward harm. There is a profound difference between allowing gambling and engineering environments designed to maximize gambling intensity. A mature regulated market should not ask: “How do we get as many people as possible to gamble?” It should ask: “How do we prevent gambling from becoming harmful for those who choose to participate?”

Yes, there is tension between commercial interests and player protection. More gambling often means more revenue. Longer sessions mean more revenue. Higher engagement means more revenue.

Even providers who position themselves as ‘responsible’ contribute to normalization through marketing and growth targets. The tension between commercial success and player protection is real. We need to ask not just ‘what’s legal?’ but ‘what’s responsible?’ and ‘what preserves trust?

The future of this sector will not be decided by short-term growth. It will be decided by whether society believes the sector is genuinely preventing avoidable harm even when that could be commercially uncomfortable.

Real and credible protection. That is what creates and sustains trust. Industries rarely lose freedom because regulators suddenly become unreasonable. Industries lose freedom when society stops trusting them. And honestly: that process has already started.

I do not believe the future is predetermined. The sector has the tools, technology, data, and behavioral insights to provide effective protection.

The challenge is cultural: are you willing to redefine success? Not: “How do we maximize engagement?” But: “How do we minimize preventable harm?” Because trust is not built through words. It is built through restraint, responsibility and protecting people from harm.. 

Because the future will be decided by whether society continues to believe that the benefits of a regulated market outweigh the harms. 

That’s the challenge ahead 

Thank you