SBC Summit Europe: What does a successful regulated market look like?

SBC Summit Europe | 19-21 April 2027 | RAI Amsterdam

What does a successful regulated gambling market actually look like? 

It’s a question facing regulators, operators and policymakers across Europe, and one that is becoming more pressing as markets open up, tighten and evolve.

The answer is rarely as simple as it seems. 

High channelisation, strict consumer protection or strong tax revenue can each look like success in isolation, yet each can create new challenges elsewhere. There is no single formula that delivers everything at once.

Every market has its own regulatory framework, commercial realities and consumer behaviours, meaning what works in one country may not work in another. Success is less about finding one perfect model and more about finding the right balance.

So, ahead of SBC Summit Europe 2027, we’re exploring five areas that can help define a successful regulated market: channelisation, consumer protection, competition, taxation and innovation.

Channelisation: Keeping players in the regulated market

Let’s start with perhaps one of the clearest signs of a successful regulated market: are players actually gambling within it?

High channelisation keeps more gambling within the regulated ecosystem, allowing regulators to oversee activity, protect players, keep operators accountable and generate taxable revenue.

For example, before Sweden introduced its new licensing system in 2019, less than 50% of gambling in the competitive market was estimated to take place within the Swedish regulated system, with many operators serving Swedish players without a Swedish licence.

By 2025, the Swedish Gambling Authority estimated channelisation at 84%, a significant increase in just a few years. 

But high channelisation doesn’t always mean instant success, and no other market exemplifies this issue than the Netherlands. 

In the second half of 2025, around 91% of Dutch players gambled exclusively with legal operators. At first glance, this is an incredible feat. Yet when measured by player losses, the regulated market accounted for an estimated 53%.

In other words, while the vast majority of players remained within the regulated market, a relatively small number of players using illegal operators accounted for a disproportionately large share of gambling losses. This reveals a significant gap between player and financial channelisation.

Of course, high channelisation is still a positive step, but when players are still losing significant money to unlicensed operators, it quickly becomes apparent that success isn’t simply about how many players use licensed operators; it’s also about how much gambling activity remains within the regulated ecosystem.

Consumer Protection: Does safe always mean attractive? 

At the heart of any successful gambling regulation sits one fundamental goal: protecting players. And as online gambling has evolved, so too have the measures regulators use to reduce gambling-related harm.

From deposit and spending controls and self-exclusion tools to advertising and marketing restrictions, age and identity verification and safer gambling monitoring, regulators have a variety of ways to approach consumer protection. 

But in Europe, where each market varies in size, player preferences and online offerings, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to consumer protection is rarely the answer.

Instead, regulators need to identify the major challenges facing consumers in their specific markets and tailor an approach that best serves them.

Consumer Protection Across Europe

Across Europe, regulators have increasingly introduced measures designed to give players greater protection and control over their gambling. Different approaches can be seen across the continent:

• Denmark (self-exclusion): The national ROFUS self-exclusion scheme has grown from just 1,456 registered players in 2012 to more than 73,500 by August 2026.
• Netherlands (spending controls): Following the introduction of tougher financial monitoring, average monthly player losses fell from €146 at the end of 2024 to €119 in the first half of 2025.
• Sweden (player monitoring): Licensed operators have a statutory duty of care, requiring them to monitor gambling behaviour and intervene where necessary to help players limit excessive gambling.
• United Kingdom (gambling-management tools): Among gamblers who had used a gambling-management tool in the previous 12 months, 82.6% said it reduced the amount of time or money they spent gambling.

Different measures, different markets, but the same objective: giving players greater control and reducing the risk of gambling-related harm.

And these measures are increasingly becoming the norm. A 2026 study examining 30 European countries found that 24 (80%) had a self-exclusion register, alongside the wider use of deposit limits, advertising restrictions, player monitoring and intervention.

But, as we saw with channelisation, there is another side to the story. If restrictions designed to protect players make the licensed market less attractive, some may choose to gamble with offshore operators instead.

Ultimately, consumer protection only works when players remain within the system designed to protect them. For regulators, success therefore means making the licensed market safer without making the illegal market more attractive.

Healthy Competition: Is There Enough Choice?

Of course, players can only choose the regulated market if there is an attractive regulated market to choose from.

Healthy competition gives consumers greater choice while encouraging licensed operators to compete on product, pricing, technology and customer experience. But for that to happen, licences need to be commercially attractive enough for credible operators to actually want them.

And across Europe, markets vary dramatically: 

• Multi-licensed markets: Countries including Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK allow multiple licensed private operators to compete across major online gambling verticals.
• Mixed models: Austria and Poland combine competition in some verticals with monopolies in others. In Poland, for example, licensed private operators can compete in online betting, while online casino remains a state monopoly.
• Partially open markets: France licenses private operators for online sports betting, horse racing and poker, but online casino remains prohibited.
• Markets opening to competition: Finland provides the latest major shift, with its longstanding monopoly set to give way to licensed competition for online betting and casino from July 2027.

But simply allowing competition doesn’t automatically create a healthy competitive market.

Licensing costs, taxation, product restrictions and regulatory requirements all influence whether operators consider a market commercially attractive. At the other end of the scale, intense competition can increase advertising and acquisition pressure as operators fight for market share.

The challenge, then, is creating enough competition to give players genuine choice and keep licensed operators engaged, without compromising the standards regulation exists to uphold.

Sustainable Taxation: How Much Is Too Much?

From a government perspective, one of the clearest benefits of a regulated gambling market is taxation.

By bringing gambling activity into the licensed market, governments can generate significant public revenue from an industry that might otherwise operate offshore. 

But when it comes to deciding how much operators should pay, there is no universal answer.

Throughout Europe, markets have taken very different approaches:

• Denmark: Betting and online casino operators pay 28% of GGR, applying the same headline rate across both sectors.
• Spain: Most nationally regulated online gambling is taxed at 20% of GGR, with qualifying operators based in Ceuta and Melilla can benefit from reduced rates.
• United Kingdom: Remote gaming is now taxed at 40%, while a new 25% rate for most remote betting will take effect from April 2027. The government expects its wider gambling tax reforms to raise more than £1bn annually.
• Portugal: Online casino is taxed at 25% of GGR, while fixed-odds sports betting is taxed at 8% of betting turnover, demonstrating how taxation can be structured differently across gambling products.

These differences highlight an important point: the highest tax rate doesn’t necessarily equal the most successful tax model.

Lower rates can give licensed operators greater room to invest, innovate and compete with unlicensed alternatives, while higher rates can increase the amount governments collect from each unit of taxable gambling activity. Differentiated systems, meanwhile, allow governments to apply different tax treatments according to the characteristics of individual products.

But push taxation too far, and you risk squeezing operator margins, reducing commercial investment and making a regulated market less attractive to licensed operators. 

So perhaps success is not about collecting as much tax as possible. It is about finding a rate that generates meaningful public revenue while keeping the regulated market competitive, sustainable and attractive.

Innovation: Can Regulation Keep Up?

Finally, there is innovation.

The gambling industry of 2027 looks very different from the one regulators were overseeing 10 or 20 years ago. From crypto and blockchain-based products to prediction markets and new digital gaming formats, innovation can move significantly faster than the regulation designed to govern it.

And across Europe, regulators have varied in their approach: 

• France: In February 2026, France launched a three-year regulatory experiment for games involving monetisable digital objects (JONUM). Predominantly based on blockchain technology, the framework represents an attempt to accommodate emerging digital products while maintaining safeguards around areas such as player protection and financial crime.
• UK: The Gambling Commission has addressed the emergence of prediction markets, making clear that products meeting the legal definition of gambling must be licensed and regulated as gambling, regardless of how they are marketed or described.
• Malta: The Malta Gaming Authority initially introduced a regulatory sandbox to explore the use of cryptoassets and blockchain technology within licensed gambling. That experiment has since evolved into a permanent policy, under which licensed operators can seek approval to accept DLT assets and make use of distributed-ledger technology.

Three innovations, and three examples of how regulation can respond. But each approach ultimately faces the same challenge.

Move too slowly, and new products may develop outside existing frameworks, leaving licensed operators unable to respond to changing consumer demand. Move too quickly, and regulators risk allowing products to develop before their implications for consumer protection, financial crime or sporting integrity are fully understood.

So, successful regulation doesn’t necessarily mean saying yes or no to every new innovation. It means having a framework flexible enough to understand new products, decide where they belong and regulate them appropriately. 

So, What Does a Successful Regulated Market Actually Look Like?

After all that, we’re unfortunately no closer to discovering the perfect recipe. But that might be the point.

There is no single recipe for a successful regulated market either. 

High channelisation, strong consumer protection, healthy competition, sustainable taxation and innovation all matter, but success ultimately comes down to finding the right balance between them. And as Europe’s gambling markets continue to evolve, exactly where that balance sits will continue to change.

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