About this app
About Face Off
Holland Casino now pays 37.8% of GGR to the state, as per the additional increase in 2026, but with labour tax on top the business pays around 52% before they can look at their base running costs. It is not a small burden by any stretch of the imagination, so it is heartening to see the business doing well despite the tightening tax burden.
With such a significant rise in tax, you would forgive the company for cutting wherever possible, but Petra says they have made it work by maximising efficiency, restructuring, and maintaining their offering so the customer doesn’t notice that anything has changed.
“We feel that people are always interested in gambling and that we are the party who should offer that in a safe way. [Holland Casino] has been careful to maintain that, but of course our costs rose very quickly, so we restructured at our head office. We have also been looking at innovations in offerings, which we are currently also testing, including a further development of the Next Zone. We’ve also introduced the double zero in roulette, which we didn’t have previously in the Netherlands,” the CEO says.
How to play Face Off
Notably for highly engaging verticals light online slots, if players are receiving a smaller-than-expected RTP (return to player), or bonuses have been restricted, they could again transition to an illegal offering where there are no such restrictions.
As has been flagged in previous reports, Regulus highlighted that the top 1% of active customers accounts for almost 50% of black market revenue across Europe. This follows a similar trend across licensed gambling as the report highlights “online gambling is a consumer discretionary expenditure item. This means a large proportion of expenditure is concentrated into a relatively small number of players.”
In its market-specific breakdown, the report noted a “rapid reduction in channelling” in the UK, following the increased use of affordability checks.
How to play Face Off
As someone with a naturally curious mind, I found this frustrating. However, in a short period of time, I have seen positive changes. Recent regulatory shifts and an increasingly competitive landscape are pushing companies to innovate, and those unwilling to adapt are being left behind.
Not only has this made the industry a hotbed of innovation, but it’s also created an ideal environment for growth for those with cross-industry experience. Ideas from outside are now being welcomed, with companies finally embracing proven concepts from other sectors.
I may have started life in the industry as an outsider, but that is far from the case now. Those initial conferences were frightening, but they pushed me to meet people, and what I discovered was an industry built on community.
