Netherlands Study: 41% of New Gambling Accounts From 18-24 Group Belong to 18-Year-Olds

A new study from the Netherlands Gambling Authority (Kansspelautoriteit, or KSA) found that 41% of new online gambling accounts opened by Dutch adults aged 18 to 24 belonged to people who had just turned 18 — with a notable spike in signups timed to birthdays. The findings are part of a broader push by Dutch regulators to understand how quickly young adults enter the gambling market once they become legally eligible.

The research is one of three new studies the KSA released examining gambling habits among young people in the Netherlands, and it lands as regulators there weigh stronger protections for a demographic that keeps showing up disproportionately in the data. Dutch gambling policy has been under close scrutiny since the country’s online market opened in 2021, and this latest batch of research is among the most granular looks yet at exactly how — and how quickly — newly eligible adults start gambling once the legal barrier disappears.

What the Data Actually Shows

The KSA analyzed 15,761 newly opened online gambling accounts with betting activity during a window in May 2025, then tracked those players’ behavior over their first three months. Of that group, 5,244 accounts belonged to young adults between 18 and 24 years old, meaning that age bracket represented roughly a third of all new signups in the sample despite making up a much smaller slice of the adult population overall. Within that subset, 2,144 accounts — 41% — were opened by people exactly 18 years old.

The birthday effect was especially pronounced: 11% of those 18-year-old accounts were opened on the customer’s actual 18th birthday, and 38% were opened within one month of the user turning legal age. That pattern suggests many young Dutch consumers are, in effect, waiting for the calendar to turn before creating an account rather than gambling illegally beforehand — a signal regulators are treating as evidence that turning 18 acts as an immediate trigger for market entry.

Casino Games, Not Sports Betting, Are the Entry Point

One of the more counterintuitive findings is what young adults actually play first. Despite the assumption that sports betting drives youth interest, 72% of young-adult accounts began with casino games, while only 11% started with sports betting. Young adults in the study averaged about four gambling days per month during their first quarter, with median daily stakes of €111 — notably lower than the €209 median for older adult players. Data also showed 18-year-olds gambled more frequently than 19- to 24-year-olds, but staked less per session.

The KSA paired this account-level analysis with a separate survey of nearly 30,000 Dutch students aged 15 to 24, which found that 32% had gambled in the past year — including 28% of respondents aged 15 to 17, who are below the legal gambling age entirely. That figure is central to regulators’ broader concern that gambling has become socially normalized among Dutch youth well before they’re legally allowed to participate, whether through informal betting, family accounts, or exposure via friends and social media.

What It Means for Regulation Going Forward

The findings feed into an ongoing Dutch policy debate over whether to raise the legal online gambling age from 18 to 24, a proposal that has drawn pushback from operators and some lawmakers concerned it could push young adults toward unregulated, offshore alternatives rather than curb interest altogether. Supporters of the age hike argue the birthday-spike pattern is itself proof that 18-year-olds are being funneled straight into gambling the moment they’re allowed to, while critics counter that a higher age limit would simply delay first exposure rather than prevent problematic behavior later on.

The KSA has separately investigated how minors circumvent age verification — concluding that outright fraud against licensed operators is rare, but that illegal, unlicensed sites with weak verification standards remain a significant risk, particularly given youth-targeted advertising on platforms like TikTok. In a small number of cases, the regulator found minors were able to gamble using bank accounts or gambling accounts belonging to family members with matching initials, though it described those instances as rare exceptions rather than a systemic loophole among licensed operators.

For now, the birthday-spike data gives Dutch regulators a concrete data point to work from as they consider deposit limits, marketing restrictions, and age-verification requirements aimed specifically at the 18-24 bracket — a group that already accounts for a disproportionate share of new gambling accounts relative to its size in the overall population. How US regulators and operators respond to similar patterns domestically, where state-by-state sports betting laws already vary widely on age and verification standards, remains an open question as the industry watches how the Netherlands handles the fallout.