SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The widespread cancellation of live sports has hindered betting activity in Denmark, with figures from the country’s regulator Spillemyndigheden showing a decline in GGR.
Publishing its statistics for Q2 2020, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the Danish betting and gaming industry are apparent with the betting sector reporting a 41.22% decline in GGR for the quarter, falling from DKK 635 million in Q1 to DKK 373 million.
Online casinos saw an uptick in activity, with GGR jumping from DKK 555 million in Q1 to DKK 673 million, largely driven by the closure of land-based casinos and gambling arcades.
Gaming machines were the key driver for GGR, contributing 73.7% of GGR for the period. This was followed by roulette, which amounted to 9.7%, and blackjack a further 7.3%.
Last March as Denmark enforced its national lockdown, Spillemyndigheden relaunched its nationwide advertising campaign increasing the exposure of its ‘StopSpillet’ gambling helpline and ‘ROFUS’ self-exclusion programmes.
In June 2020, there were 23,469 Danes registered with Spillemyndigheden’s ‘ROFUS’ national self-exclusion database, compared to 19,255 in June 2019.
The majority of registrations in June 2020 were permanent registrations, with 68% opting to permanently exclude from gambling. Approximately 18.4% of gamblers chose to self-exclude for a six-month period, 8.8% selecting a three-month self-exclusion period and 4.73% for one month.
There were 86 calls made to the country’s StopSpillet gambling helpline during Q2, with males aged between 18-25 making up the majority of callers.
Most of the calls were made by gamblers themselves, while 40.7% were made by relatives and a further 2.33% made by a consultant.
Further Danish 2020 regulatory developments saw Spillemyndigheden announce that it had updated ‘Danish Gambling Act’ technical requirements on game reporting, creating a unique segment for virtual sports games to be individually audited by licensed operators.
Spillemyndigheden new technical requirements have been added alongside customer protection enforcements, which require all operators to promote the ROFUS self-exclusion scheme across their domains, in addition to ensuring all customers set mandatory deposit limits upon registration.
