As Thailand‘s coalition government moves to revive its long-delayed Entertainment Complex Bill, policymakers across Asia are confronting a question that extends far beyond casinos: when legal gambling options are restricted or prohibited, where does consumer demand actually go?
Recent developments in Europe offer a revealing answer
The debate is often framed as a simple choice between legalization and regulation on one side, and prohibition and enforcement on the other. Yet evidence from several mature gambling markets suggests that bans rarely eliminate demand. Instead, they tend to redirect it.
Regulators describe this dynamic through the concept of channelization—the percentage of total gambling activity that takes place with licensed and regulated operators rather than within the unlicensed market.
The Netherlands provides a striking example. According to the Dutch Gambling Authority, channelization fell from 51% at the end of 2024 to 49% during the first half of 2025. For the first time since the country legalized online gambling, the estimated illegal online market—worth approximately €617 million—generated more revenue than the licensed sector, which recorded around €600 million.
The decline followed the introduction of stricter deposit limits and higher gambling taxes, measures designed to strengthen player protection but which may also have encouraged some consumers to seek alternatives outside the regulated market.
This highlights one of the central challenges facing regulators. Tightening restrictions within the legal market can improve consumer safeguards, but if those restrictions become overly burdensome, some players may migrate to offshore operators that operate entirely outside regulatory oversight.
That migration matters because the regulated channel is designed to provide protections that illegal operators generally do not offer.
Researchers such as gambling studies expert Mark Griffiths have long argued that certain structural characteristics of gambling products—particularly event frequency, or how quickly players can place repeated bets—can contribute to harmful behaviour among vulnerable consumers. In regulated markets, these risks are addressed through safeguards such as deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion schemes, affordability checks, reality reminders, and responsible gambling interventions.
Those protections become far less effective once players move to unlicensed platforms. A self-excluded customer, for example, can often register with another offshore operator within minutes, with none of the protections from the regulated market following them.
Rather than abandoning regulation, many European policymakers are investing in stronger evidence-based approaches. In May 2026, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) launched a major national gambling-harms research initiative aimed at improving understanding of gambling-related risks and informing future policy responses.
For lawmakers in Bangkok, Manila, and other Asian capitals, the lesson is not primarily about morality. It is about market design.
Thailand’s Entertainment Complex Bill has returned to the political agenda after previous delays, while the Philippines continues to assess the consequences of its offshore gambling crackdown. In both cases, the fundamental question remains the same: prohibition does not eliminate demand. It simply determines whether that demand exists within a regulated system that can monitor, protect, and intervene—or outside one that cannot.
As Europe’s experience increasingly demonstrates, the success of gambling policy may depend less on whether gambling is permitted and more on whether the regulated market remains attractive enough to keep consumers within it.
