Belgium's First-Time Online Gamblers Fell 43% in 2025 as Revenue Rose to €965m

The Gaming Commission's annual report shows a market growing on the players it already has and struggling to recruit new ones since the age limit rose to 21. Self-exclusions are up, land-based visits are down a quarter, and the operators' association says 28% of 18 to 30-year-olds have already gambled on an illegal site.

• Belgium's licensed online gambling market produced gross gaming revenue of €964.46m in 2025, up 5.41% and 59.51% of a legal market of about €1.62bn, while land-based revenue fell 7.17% to €656.09m, according to the Kansspelcommissie's annual report as reported by CasinoNieuws and SBC News
• 110,032 people registered to gamble online for the first time, down 43.1% from 193,342 in 2024; the regulator attributes part of the fall to the minimum age rising from 18 to 21 on 1 September 2024, and says 21 to 29-year-olds were the largest group of newcomers
• Average daily active online players nonetheless rose 3% to 160,144, and 528,706 individuals gambled online at least once; average daily visits to physical venues fell 24.5% to 27,532
• Voluntary self-exclusions in the EPIS register reached 66,998 at year end from 56,458, and the mandatory EPIS check introduced on 1 May 2025 blocked 715,373 attempted visits
• BAGO, the licensed operators' association, called the finding that 28% of respondents aged 18 to 30 have already played on an illegal site "an alarm signal that cannot be ignored" and asked chair Magali Clavie for a strategy against the black market, SBC News reports

Growth From the Existing Base, Not From Recruitment

Belgium's regulated online gambling market grew again in 2025 while the number of people entering it for the first time fell sharply, according to the annual report of the Kansspelcommissie (KSC), the country's Gaming Commission, as reported on Wednesday by CasinoNieuws and on Thursday by SBC News. Online gross gaming revenue rose 5.41% to €964.46m, which the regulator puts at 59.51% of a legal market worth about €1.62bn. Revenue from land-based gambling fell 7.17% to €656.09m. Within that, casinos grew 5.85% to €152.29m, gaming arcades declined 4.17%, and cafés, where bingo and similar products are offered, recorded the sharpest fall, down 17.77% to €196.01m.

The 2024 comparatives have been revised. Licence holders have been required since 2024 to file financial data digitally each quarter, but the KSC initially lacked the capacity to process the submissions and left the figures out of its previous report, CasinoNieuws reports. A full-time appointment to its financial control unit in December 2025 allowed the data to be checked, with additional audits at operators, and certain 2024 numbers were corrected as a result.

The recruitment figure is the one the report draws attention to. In 2025, 110,032 people registered to gamble online for the first time, against 193,342 in 2024, a fall of 43.1%. The regulator links part of the decline to the increase in the legal gambling age from 18 to 21, which took effect on 1 September 2024; those aged 21 to 29 were the largest group among the newcomers. The measure counts individuals entering the licensed market rather than accounts opened, CasinoNieuws notes. Despite the drop, average daily active online players increased 3% to 160,144, and 528,706 different people gambled online at least once during the year. In the physical estate, average daily visits fell 24.5% to 27,532.

Exclusions, Blocks and Fines That Cannot Be Collected

Self-exclusion continued to grow. At 31 December 2025, 66,998 people were registered for voluntary exclusion in the Excluded Persons Information System (EPIS), up from 56,458 a year earlier. The commission received 16,358 exclusion applications during the year, almost 76% of them through the itsme digital identity service, and in 39.09% of cases the applicant named a trusted person. Requests to lift an exclusion rose from 5,326 to 5,519. Since 1 May 2025 operators have had to check every player against EPIS before granting access, and 715,373 physical and online visits were blocked as a result.

Against the illegal market, the KSC asked Meta to remove more than 8,500 gambling advertisements from Facebook and Instagram, added 370 sites to its blacklist, and used a simplified administrative procedure introduced in March 2025 to block 155 URLs more quickly; in December it signed an agreement with DNS Belgium covering .be domains used by unlicensed operators. Collecting fines from foreign operators remains difficult, the report says: €81,100 was actually collected in 2025, after a 2024 in which only €27,525 of €4,605,700 imposed was recovered.

BAGO, the association of licensed Belgian operators, responded that the report confirms consumers are drifting outside the regulated market. "The fact that 28% of respondents aged 18 to 30 state they have already played on an illegal gambling site is an alarm signal that cannot be ignored," it said, as quoted by SBC News. "The far-reaching restrictions imposed on licensed operators render legal and regulated gaming alternatives invisible, while the illegal and clandestine circuit continues its aggressive marketing efforts to attract players." Players on illegal sites lose the protection of EPIS access controls, deposit limits and KSC supervision, and may face prosecution, the association said, calling on chair Magali Clavie to "strengthen the regulator and urge the government to preserve a recognisable legal offering and prioritise action against illegal providers and their financial flows".

Belgium Ran the Experiment the Netherlands Just Declined to Run

Belgium raised its gambling age to 21, banned almost all advertising and tightened identification within three years. The Dutch government, looking at the same options this year, dropped its own age-21 proposal while keeping the advertising ban. This report is the first full-year reading of what the Belgian version produces: revenue up 5%, daily players up 3%, first-time players down 43%. Those numbers are compatible with two stories. One is that the reforms kept a cohort of 18 to 20-year-olds out of gambling, which is what they were for. The other, BAGO's, is that the cohort went somewhere else. The 28% figure for under-30s on illegal sites is the reason the second story cannot be dismissed, and the reason the KSA chairman next door has said half of every euro goes illegal.

A Regulator That Could Not Count Its Own Market Until December

The quieter admission in the report is that the KSC did not have the staff to process quarterly financial returns from its licensees until it hired one person at the end of 2025, and that its 2024 figures needed correcting once someone looked. A regulator that enforces a near-total advertising ban and a mandatory exclusion check on every visit is running a demanding regime on a thin base, and the €81,100 it collected in fines against a €4.6m book the year before makes the same point from the enforcement side. BAGO's demand for a "strengthened" regulator is self-interested, but it is also accurate.

The Land-Based Numbers Are the Ones Without a Black-Market Excuse

Daily visits to physical venues fell by a quarter and café revenue by 18%, and no one is arguing that bingo players migrated to Curaçao. That is the age limit and the EPIS check at the door doing exactly what they were designed to do, at a cost the retail estate is now carrying. The online market, by contrast, grew on the players it already had. The Belgian question for 2026 is whether a licensed sector that cannot advertise and cannot sign up anyone under 21 can hold a market whose next generation of players, on the association's survey, has already been somewhere else.

Belgium's legal market is bigger than it was and younger players are not joining it. The report cannot say where they went. BAGO thinks it can.