‘Holland Casino and Toto spend millions extra on gambling advertisements’

This is apparent from a calculation by research agency Nielsen where de Volkskrant write about today.

The researchers counted more than 366,000 gambling ads on television and the Internet in October and November. In the same period last year, there were still 170,000.

Wave of ads

Online gambling was legalized on October 1. Since then, three out of four gambling advertisements have focused on online games of chance, de Volkskrant writes.

Holland Casino spent an estimated 6.4 million euros on gambling advertisements in the past two months. Toto spent almost 4.6 million euros on it. These amounts have been calculated by Nielsen on the basis of the regular prices charged by advertisements on television and the internet. So it is an estimate. In total, the eleven online casinos in the Netherlands spent more than 23 million euros on gambling advertisements in October and November.

A majority of the House of Representatives announced last week that they wanted to curb the wave of untargeted advertising for online gambling. Since the online gambling market was legalized and the advertising campaigns started, there has been a lot more gambling and addiction lurking, say those involved.

Since the opening of the online gambling market, there has been a major increase in the number of hours people spend on online gambling sites, the MPs who submitted the motion said last week.

Addiction Problems

According to the politicians, that was never the goal of legalizing online games of chance, they say, but is now in fact the result. “With potentially major social consequences, such as financial problems and addiction problems.”

By legalizing online gambling, the government wanted to remove online gambling from the illegal circuit. This should prevent problems such as fraud, addiction and inadequate age control.