The Danish Gambling Authority blocked 334 websites offering illegal gambling in 2025, more than double the 162 it blocked in 2024. The rise of 172 sites, or 106.2%, is set out in the regulator’s Report on Illegal Gambling 2025.
The bulk of the action came in a single push. In June, the authority secured a court order to block 178 illegal sites at once, the broadest enforcement round it has run. The regulator said the blocked sites saw visits fall by 34% in the six months after the action compared with the period before it.
The blocks are enforced through DNS blocking, where the connection between a player and an operator’s site is cut by the player’s telecommunications provider. The site is not taken down, but Danish users who try to reach it are redirected.
“The figures indicate that, even in 2025, DNS blocking measures have helped reduce Danes’ traffic to illegal gambling sites,” the Danish Gambling Authority said. “This underscores that DNS blocking remains an effective tool in the fight against illegal gambling operators.”
More sites blocked, fewer requests filed
The jump in blocked sites did not come from a rise in the regulator’s caseload. There were 197 requests for blockings in 2025, down from 214 in 2024. The gap between requests filed and sites blocked reflects how the authority now bundles cases: it began requesting blocks through the courts in 2012, submitting cases once a year, and moved to twice-yearly submissions in 2024. Grouping more sites into each court application lifts the number blocked per round.
The authority uses the count as a measure of reach rather than a measure of the black market’s size. It reports a decline in visits after each round, which it treats as evidence that redirected traffic is not simply moving to another unlicensed domain.
Land-based enforcement runs in parallel
The report also covers the retail side. The Danish Gambling Authority was involved in cases concerning 25 gambling premises where slot machines had been installed without a licence. Unlicensed machines in bars, kiosks and similar venues remain a recurring enforcement target alongside the online blocking programme.
Denmark runs a licensed market for online casino and betting, and the enforcement figures sit against a backdrop of a maturing regulated sector where online casino leads growth as an advertising ban looms. Channelling players toward licensed operators is the stated aim of the blocking work, and the authority ties its enforcement case to keeping regulated operators competitive against sites that pay no Danish tax and apply no local player-protection rules.
Part of a wider enforcement pattern
The Danish figures land as regulators across Europe step up action against unlicensed supply. Turkey has accelerated its own illegal gambling crackdown under new reforms, and the scale of the target remains large: analysis put unregulated online gambling at $5.9tn in wagers in 2025. DNS blocking addresses access rather than supply, and operators can register new domains, so regulators treat the tool as a way to raise friction rather than close the market.
The Danish numbers follow the Malta Gaming Authority’s annual report for 2025, which set out its own enforcement action and sports betting integrity monitoring. With the authority now running two blocking rounds a year, the 2026 figures will show whether bundling more sites into each court application keeps pushing the annual total higher, or whether the pool of sites actively targeting Danish players starts to level off.
Source: Danish Gambling Authority
