Danish Gambling Authority Releases Illegal Gambling Report 09 April 2024

Danish Gambling is making progressive moves in combating illegal gambling in the country. A recently released report by gambling regulator Spillemyndigheden shed light on two aspects.

The first was to update the rules used to classify a gambling activity as illegal. The second purpose was to review past efforts and their effectiveness in combating illegal gambling.

Combating illegal gambling so far

Illegal gambling in Denmark has been strongly related to channelisation. There has been decent channelisation since 2022 when the country ranked 10th in Europe scoring 89.2%.

Channelisation did not stop there but continued to see progress in the following year, 2023. In 2023, channelisation improved significantly with a rise to 90.15%. This new high in channelisation moved its place higher in ranking in Europe to sixth.

Despite the improvement, Denmark still lags behind some European countries. The countries include Italy, the Czech Republic and Great Britain have channelisation rates of 94.36%, 97.17% and 96.70%.

In 2023, the authority collaborated with the Danish Tax Agency’s anti-fraud unit and was able to conduct three searches for potentially illegal websites. More so, the Danish Gambling Authority team assisted with the searches.

These efforts resulted in several websites being blocked by the court. 49 websites were denied access to consumers in Denmark including popular websites such as Stake.com.

The number of blocked illegal websites has reduced when compared to 2022. In 2022, 82 websites were blocked for illegal gambling activity.

While illegal offerings are on the rise, the authority has been able to limit the market for illegal gambling.

“The Danish Gambling Authority has consistently seen that there are more websites that communicate access to illegal gambling than there are websites with gambling offers that target the Danish market without a licence,“ reads the report from Spillemyndigheden.

Recommendations from the report

The report has shown an intention to collaborate with private companies such as Apple, Facebook and Google. The collaboration would help remove illegal gambling content on the websites and applications by identifying and reporting illegal gambling content.

There is also an effort toward combating other forms of illegal gambling besides online casinos. These include skin betting and the intersection of gambling and video games.

More so, it is recommended that consumers are educated about illegal gambling. This will create awareness of illegal gambling and reporting channels where they can complain.

The fight against illegal gambling also requires an international approach. There is a recommendation for collaboration across national borders.

Besides partnerships with international stakeholders, European gambling regulators can cooperate to share information and best practices to tackle illegal gambling.

Denmark has already had the ball rolling with international collaborations. In 2023, the regulating body in Denmark joined the Group of European Gambling Regulators (GREF).