Denmark’s regulated gambling market entered 2026 with online casino revenue accelerating at double-digit rates, sports betting contracting sharply ahead of a whistle-to-whistle advertising ban scheduled for 2026 and 2027, and a broader marketing reform package that redefines the competitive terms for licensed operators.
Denmark’s Gambling Authority (Spillemyndigheden) reported commercial gross gaming revenue of DKK 7.27bn (€975m) in 2024, a 6.9% increase over 2023. Including state-run lotteries under the Danske Spil monopoly, total gambling spend reached DKK 11.0bn (€1.47bn), up 5.6% year-on-year. Monthly data published through November 2025 points to a market still expanding on the online side while exposed to growing regulatory headwinds on advertising, promotions and sports betting visibility.
Regulatory framework and the 28% duty
The Danish Gambling Act (Spilleloven) has governed the market since 1 January 2012, when the state monopoly held by Danske Spil was opened for commercial online operators. Spillemyndigheden, part of the Ministry of Taxation, issues B2C licences covering online casino and betting on a five-year cycle. As of 2024, 967 active licences were on issue, including 40 online casino and 26 betting licences, with 289 gaming machine venue licences.
Online casino and betting operators pay gambling duty of 28% on GGR, calculated monthly. Bonus money, free spins and other promotional incentives cannot be deducted when calculating GGR, which taxes promotional spend at the same rate as retained revenue. The application fee is DKK 327,500 (€43,895) for a single online licence and DKK 458,500 for a combined betting and casino application. Annual fees range from DKK 73,200 for operators with GGR below DKK 5m to DKK 6.45m for those above DKK 500m, based on 2026 fee levels published by Spillemyndigheden.
From 1 January 2025, a separate B2B licensing regime took effect. Game suppliers must now obtain their own Spillemyndigheden licence before their content can be offered by a Danish-licensed B2C operator. From 1 July 2025, suppliers must file compliance documentation independently rather than through operator submissions. The framework closes a gap that existed under the previous regime, where operators carried full compliance responsibility for third-party content. Italy’s licensing reforms have taken a parallel direction, with a new licensing regime introducing 52 active permits in late 2025.
Denmark’s channelisation rate reached 91.5% in 2024, up from 90.8% in 2023. That placed the country fifth globally for the share of gambling activity captured by licensed operators, based on H2 Gambling Capital data cited by Spillemyndigheden in its annual report.
2024 vertical breakdown and the 2025 trajectory
Online casino was the dominant commercial vertical in 2024 at DKK 3.53bn, or 48.6% of commercial GGR, a 14.7% year-on-year increase. Sports betting contributed DKK 2.21bn (+1.2%), gaming machines DKK 1.16bn (the only major vertical to decline, at -2.3%), and land-based casinos DKK 368m (+1.7%).
Monthly data published through 2025 confirmed the online casino momentum and exposed the fragility of sports betting revenue in a year without a major international football tournament.
| Month | Total GGR | YoY Change | Online Casino | Sports Betting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2025 | DKK 590m | +0.6% | DKK 294m (+5.8%) | DKK 175m (-1.7%) |
| Mar 2025 | DKK 635m | +1.4% | DKK 330m (+6.5%) | slight decline |
| Apr 2025 | DKK 665m | +11.6% | DKK 331m (+21.4%) | mixed |
| May 2025 | DKK 683m | +19.5% | DKK 389m (+39.9%) | DKK 154m (-6.3%) |
| Jun 2025 | DKK 585m | -17.0% | DKK 333m (+10.0%) | DKK 126m (-53.5%) |
| Aug 2025 | DKK 714m | double-digit growth | growth | growth |
| Oct 2025 | DKK 599m | -3.4% | DKK 356m (+24.4%) | DKK 112m (-46.0%) |
| Nov 2025 | DKK 767m | +17.1% | DKK 375m (+27.1%) | DKK 265m (+14.2%) |
The June 2025 betting drop reflected the absence of the UEFA European Championship that had lifted 2024’s comparable period. The October 2025 decline was more material because it came during the European football club season, pointing to a structural rather than calendar effect. By November, betting revenue had rebounded to DKK 265m (+14.2% year-on-year), though online casino’s 27.1% growth in the same period continued to widen the vertical gap.
Slots accounted for 78.9% of online casino revenue in April 2025, with blackjack at 6.6% and roulette at 6.4%. Mobile devices generated 67.9% of online casino activity, up from 59% in 2024. That mobile shift has run consistently across every monthly report published by Spillemyndigheden in 2025.
Online traffic: licensed brands and offshore exposure
Web traffic data drawn from Ahrefs for late 2025 offers a view the regulator’s GGR reports cannot provide on their own. It shows where Danish users actually go to gamble online, and separates the licensed B2C cluster from offshore .com domains that continue to register Danish traffic outside the Spillemyndigheden perimeter.
| Domain | Visits | Mobile share | YoY |
| danskespil.dk | 2.54M | 58.53% | ↓4.27% |
| bet365.dk | 1.6M | 66.34% | ↑24.3% |
| royalcasino.dk | 743.88K | 85.43% | ↑70.26% |
| unibet.dk | 659.81K | 70.24% | ↓12.86% |
| 888casino.dk | 455.85K | 79.07% | ↑82.98% |
| spillehallen.dk | 404.26K | 87.46% | ↓4.58% |
| bet25.dk | 379.82K | 75.98% | ↑9.58% |
| stake.com | 375.28K | 77.69% | ↓40.5% |
| casinopenge.dk | 332.52K | 66.71% | ↑86.29% |
| cashpoint.dk | 324.86K | 19.76% | ↓35.86% |
| comeon.com | 311.91K | 14.74% | ↑0.32% |
| nordicbet.dk | 206.51K | 84.99% | ↑3.91% |
Danske Spil leads at 2.54m monthly visits, reflecting its position across the lottery monopoly, sports betting and online casino. The state-controlled operator retains scale advantages from brand recognition that predate the 2012 liberalisation. Bet365 follows at 1.6m visits through its Danish-licensed property.
Royal Casino, operated by RoyalCasino.com Ltd and licensed by Spillemyndigheden since 1 May 2016, reached 743,880 visits. The brand is tied to the land-based Royal Casino in Aarhus, giving it a dual-channel profile that few Danish licensees share. Unibet, part of Kindred Group and now consolidated under FDJ United, recorded 659,810 visits. 888 Casino, operated by Evoke, drew 455,850. Spillehallen, Bet25, Cashpoint and Betsson AB’s NordicBet round out the mid-tier licensed cluster, with NordicBet at 206,510 visits.
Stake.com, owned by Easygo Entertainment, captured 375,280 visits. ComeOn.com drew 311,910. ComeOn’s parent was issued an AML compliance notice by Netherlands regulator KSA in November 2025, and that kind of cross-border enforcement attention is the pattern most likely to shape how such offshore traffic is treated by Spillemyndigheden as the Game Package 1 measures begin to bite.
Casinopenge.dk, at 332,520 visits, operates as a comparison and affiliate destination rather than a licensed B2C site. Affiliate-layer traffic of this volume matters for operator marketing teams because it captures user intent before any individual operator does, and Spillemyndigheden’s enforcement toolkit is focused primarily on unlicensed operators rather than the affiliate layer that funnels acquisition traffic.
The licensed cluster’s total visible traffic in this dataset exceeds 7m monthly visits, broadly consistent with the 91.5% channelisation rate reported by Spillemyndigheden for 2024. Approximately 700,000 combined visits to offshore .com domains sits outside the taxed and regulated system. That is the same leakage vector that Danish industry body Spillebranchen has cited in its warnings about the advertising reform package scheduled for 2026 and 2027.
The advertising reform timeline
On 24 October 2025, a broad coalition in the Folketinget reached a political agreement on Game Package 1 (Spilpakken 1). The package introduces a whistle-to-whistle advertising ban during live sports broadcasts, running from 10 minutes before the start of an event to 10 minutes after its conclusion. It restricts outdoor advertising within 200 metres of schools, prohibits live odds banners during sports broadcasts, bans free bet welcome offers, and tightens rules on the use of public figures in gambling advertising. Strengthened ROFUS self-exclusion powers and additional funding for treatment of gambling addiction are also in the package.
The Ministry of Taxation notified the European Commission of the proposed amendments on 13 January 2026, triggering a standstill period that ended on 14 April 2026. Under the rollout plan, the core whistle-to-whistle provisions take effect between 1 July 2026 and January 2027.
Financial projections submitted by the Ministry estimated a DKK 25m annual drop in sports betting revenue from the new marketing restrictions, partly offset by an expected DKK 10m contribution from newly permitted online casino game types (dice and wheel-based games) from 2027. An additional DKK 40m per year is projected from reduced gambling company tax reimbursements.
Morten Rønde, director of industry body Spillebranchen and managing partner at Nordic Legal, has argued that the package removes the competitive advantage of licensed operators over offshore sites.
Advertising in Danish media is the only advantage that a licensed operator has. Because otherwise it is just restrictions and taxation.
Rønde has pointed to Italy and the Netherlands as precedents where advertising bans coincided with growth in illegal gambling offerings. Italy has begun to roll back parts of its original ban in response to that effect. The October 2025 collapse in Danish sports betting revenue, covered in detail in the iGaming EU’s reporting on Denmark’s 46% betting plunge, offered an early signal of how exposed the vertical is to restricted marketing.
A second legislative package, Game Package 2, is under development. It may introduce further restrictions on influencer marketing, in-game promotional mechanics and prediction markets. Spillemyndigheden has flagged prediction markets as a regulatory concern but has stated it lacks authority to block platforms that do not specifically target Danish players, an issue common to other EU regulators handling cross-border gambling products.
What to watch into 2026
Denmark enters 2026 with three pressure points that will define the commercial trajectory of the regulated market. The first is whether online casino growth of 20% to 40% year-on-year can be sustained through the balance of 2026, given the DKK 3.53bn 2024 base and the 2025 run rate. The second is how sports betting responds to the rollout of whistle-to-whistle advertising restrictions through the second half of 2026, with October 2025’s 46% decline offering a cautionary baseline for what restricted marketing can do to the vertical.
The third is whether the channelisation rate holds at or above 91.5% as licensed operators lose the advertising reach that industry groups argue underpins the regulated market’s current dominance. Spillemyndigheden blocked 178 illegal gambling sites in June 2025, the largest single enforcement action since the 2012 framework entered force. That enforcement intensity will likely need to increase through 2026 to preserve channelisation levels if restricted advertising begins to erode licensed brand visibility. The pattern is consistent with the Southern European market structure observed in Portugal’s 2025 online gambling data, where licensed-market expansion has coincided with affiliate-layer leakage that regulators have yet to address directly.
The first test of the new framework will come with Q1 2026 monthly data from Spillemyndigheden, expected in April and May. Those figures will be the first to reflect operator behaviour under the incoming advertising regime and the first indicator of whether the compliance-heavy Danish model retains its reputation as the Nordic benchmark, or moves closer to the black-market friction visible in Sweden and the Netherlands.
Source: Spillemyndigheden
