Denmark’s Online Gambling Participation Rate Second Highest in Europe

New figures from the regulator Spillemyndigheden show that Denmark has the second-highest online gambling participation in Europe and that it’s one of three countries where the majority of gross gaming revenue comes from internet channels.

Only Sweden has a higher percentage of online play (59%) and in Denmark, 53.1% of revenue came from online gambling in 2019. That’s $826 million in total.

The Pecking Order

The countries that were measured in this research study…

…were the 15 member states of the European Union before the 2004 engagement plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. Norway is the third country in which majority of gambling revenue came from online. Great Britain is fourth with 45%.

The regulator said that a greater proportion of Danes who do play online do so on a mobile device rather than on a computer. The portion of online revenue that comes from mobile devices grew by five percentage points year-on-year to 61%, after only 11% of revenue came from mobile devices in 2012.

32.3% of Danish gambling revenue came from mobile play in 2019.

Steady Online Growth

2019 is the second year in which online gaming has contributed to more than half of the overall Danish gaming market. It’s an increase from 2018 when online revenue made up 51.5% of the market.

Since 2012, online gaming’s gross revenue and market share has grown year on year every year. This trend will continue with the pandemic limiting the land-based sector in 2020.

The growth of online gambling has provided assistance to the Danish gaming market growth in total by 25.6% since 2012. Overall gaming revenue, the regulator says, was stable from 2018 to 2019, while land-based revenue declined slightly.

Changes Coming

The first year of the online gaming market in Denmark was 2012 and in it, players spent 2.4bn DKK online, which represented 30.8% of the overall market.

Spillemyndigheden announced that Andres Dorph, former deputy director of the Danish Immigration Service, will become the regulator’s new director on 1 November.

Dorph will replace Morten Niels Jakobsen, who stepped down from the role in August to become director of land value assessor for the Danish Valuation Agency.

Danske Spil, Denmark’s state-run operator, has begun to roll out new player ID cards which will shift all land-based sports betting that is organized by the operator to account-based play. Players will need to show the card to place a retail bet.

Source:

“Danish igaming participation rate second-highest in Europe”, igamingbusiness.com, October 27th, 2020.