Denmark Continues Its War Against Illegal Online Gambling Sites

Amidst the ongoing global pandemic, a mounting concern for many governments has been the increase in gambling activity as people have become housebound and in many cases face unemployment or limited earnings.

This has led to regions such as Sweden, Portugal, Great Britain and even Malta to revisit their regulations and create short term restrictions on spending, losses and bet limits to pre-emptively address poor gambling decisions.

Preying On The Vulnerable

Legitimate gambling operators might not like the financial losses this can cause they support the drive to protect at-risk gamblers from themselves.

However, the black market casino operators are seeing this as a chance to benefit from the distress of others and are actively targeting markets with restrictions promising the right to gamble as you please. Some of these sites offer skin-betting which while it does not offer cash payouts for the money spent does offer in-game items which are highly attractive to under 18 video game players.

It is these operators who are the most problematic to manage as with the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and virtual currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum there are many avenues a determined gambler can follow to get their fix.

 Denmark Say No!

The Danish Gambling Authority is determined to fight these unregulated operators and recently went to court to secure injunctions against 16 illegal gambling websites (7 online casinos, 7 skin betting sites and 2 sports betting sites).

Director of the Danish Gambling Authority Morten Niels Jakobsen said:

“We work to protect players against illegal gambling, and we also need to ensure that the operators who are licenced to offer gambling in Denmark can run their businesses under orderly conditions. That is why it is very important for us to clamp down on gambling offered without a licence”

To date, Denmark has successfully blocked 74 online gambling websites in this manner. The court action allows for Danish internet service providers to block the offending websites at an IP level which means no Danish resident can access the site.