The Danish gambling regulator, Spillemyndigheden, has published its annual report on the fight against the illegal gambling market for 2025. The document covers website blockages, upcoming legislative changes, and collaborations with tech giants like Apple, Google, Meta, and Twitch. Here are the key highlights:
Website Blockages:
- The court blocked a record 334 illegal operator websites based on regulator lawsuits (up from 162 in 2024, marking a record since the partial liberalization of the market in 2012).
- 36 websites ceased operations with Danish players or adjusted their activities following direct regulator intervention.
- Three joint inspections by the regulator and Denmark's Tax Authority's anti-fraud division identified 695 potentially illegal operator and intermediary websites.
- Danish traffic to 178 websites blocked in June 2025 fell by 34% within six months post-blockage, according to the regulator's assessment using Semrush web analytics.
New Powers:
- The regulator gained the ability to block mirrors of blocked websites without a new court ruling, thanks to an updated agreement with the internet service provider association Teleindustrien.
- The political agreement Spilpakke 1, dated October 24, 2025, will grant the regulator the right to block intermediary sites that redirect Danish players to illegal operators.
- The existing ban on attracting players will be expanded to all operators without a Danish license, not just those targeting the local market. Amendments are expected to take effect by January 1, 2027.
- Spilpakke 1 also allocates a budget for developing a new tool for automatic monitoring of gambling advertising in digital services.
Trends:
The regulator notes an increase in the dissemination of links and promotions for illegal operators in closed communities on Discord, Telegram, and other communication services. It is also increasingly finding gambling pages on subdomains of regular websites, although it can only block such resources entirely.
Collaboration and Prevention:
Agreements with Apple, Google, Meta, and the streaming platform Twitch enable the regulator to directly pursue the removal of illegal content from the App Store, Google Play, YouTube, Google search ads, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch streams. Danish licensees can now report the use of their brands in illegal gambling advertising to Meta, with the number of such cases significantly increasing over the year.
In 2025, the regulator conducted 100 lectures on gambling in high schools and colleges and has begun recruiting staff for this area in response to growing demand.
According to Spillemyndigheden, the increase in blockages reflects the regulator's enhanced efforts rather than necessarily a rise in the illegal market. A separate report on the share of licensed operators in the country's online gambling sector is expected to be released later in 2026.
The number of blockages surged from 49 in 2023 to 334 in 2025, nearly a sevenfold increase over two years. The right to block intermediary sites and automatic advertising monitoring will only be granted to the regulator after the amendments to Spilpakke 1 are adopted.