Denmark’s gambling market posted a deceptively stable performance in 2025, with its overall gross gaming revenue masking a sharp divergence between verticals.
The online casino sector grew by more than 12% year-on-year, rising from 3.8bn DKK to 4.3bn DKK, making it a significant outlier in an otherwise contracting market.
Lottery, sports betting, slot machines and land-based casinos all recorded falls, though the losses were broadly offset by online casino’s gains.
The country’s total GGR came in at just under 11.5bn DKK, representing a decline of less than 1% compared to the previous year.
Perhaps most notably, 2025 marked the first time since liberalisation in 2012 that online casino spend surpassed lottery revenues, ending years of dominance by the lottery vertical.
Denmark’s market had grown steadily following the breakdown of Danske Spil’s monopoly and the opening of online casino and sports betting to competition under the Danish Gambling Act.
That upward trajectory continued until 2018, which the Danish regulator Spillemyndigheden identified as a high-water mark, reporting a GGR of 13.5bn DKK for the year.
From that point, a series of regulatory interventions began reshaping the market, starting with a political agreement in December 2018 that led to a consumer protection code of conduct.
StopSpillet, the free national helpline for gambling addiction, was established in 2019, and online gaming tax was raised from 20% to 28% at the start of 2021.
The cumulative effect of these changes, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic’s blow to land-based operations, left online casino as the only vertical to sustain meaningful growth since 2012, expanding by 139% over that period.
Sports betting fared particularly poorly in 2025, contracting by 11.5%, a decline that almost precisely mirrors the gains made by online casino during the same period.
Structural pressures including stricter ID verification requirements, advertising restrictions and statutory deposit limits have weighed heavily on most parts of the industry beyond online casino.
Further regulatory changes are already in the pipeline, with new legislation introduced in February 2026 by Denmark’s Minister of Taxation aimed at reforming the industry once more.
Proposals currently under consideration include a whistle-to-whistle ban on gambling advertisements during live sporting events, alongside restrictions on free welcome bets and live odds banners inside sports stadiums.
One question the annual report cannot yet answer is whether tighter regulation is pushing Danish bettors toward unlicensed operators, as Spillemyndigheden has not included channelisation data in this year’s publication.
The Danish Gambling Authority noted it is “working on quality assurance of existing figures,” with that data set to be published separately later in the year.
The most recent available channelisation figure, from 2024, stood at 91.5%, placing Denmark fifth highest in Europe and slightly above the 90.8% recorded in 2023.
