Denmark's regulator Spillemyndigheden has reported an 18.3% year-on-year increase in gambling expenditure for February.
The increase was evenly across the board for betting, casinos, gaming machines, and land-based casinos. This totalled DKK587m (£67.16m/€78.69/$83.64) in February.
Betting on sports and online games of chance, with the largest proportional increase gross gaming revenues stood at 32.5 percent increase from sports betting, while online gaming generated 18.5 percent increase GGR. In year February, this is likely due to lower RTP in the localities of these games, suggested Spillemyndigheden.
What’s outlined in the report?
The statistics that were used in the February report are taken from numbers submitted by operators to the Danish Tax Agency. In addition to the Danish gambling market statistics, the report provides incidents of responsible gambling. These come from the Global Report on Self-Excluded Gamblers (ROFUS) and StopSpillet, the Danish problem gambling hotline.
In GGR terms, sports betting captured the market at 30.2%, with an online casino further accounting for 47.3%, while gaming machines have a share of 16.9%. Of the remaining 5.4% GGR, land-based casinos comprise the remaining market.
While the overall increase in GGR was 18.3% compared to February, seemingly there is significant variation across verticals.
Of all the activities occurring in the world of sports betting, the largest proportionate increase has taken place here, rising by over 32.5% from DKK lunch and dinner for DKK 178.0 million in February. Mobile remains the strongest in Denmark, with shares of 65.6% in all bets in February, followed by desktop at 24.1%, and retail at 10.19%.
Online casinos also experienced a significant rise of 18.53% from DKK 278.0 million in February from DKK 234.0 million in February. Interestingly, desktop is still the vastly preferred medium for online casino as compared to sports betting. Such desktop statistics cover 38.8% of all bets being placed with the far-remaining 61.1% of bets being from mobile reports.
There was virtually no movement through huge slots standalone in its, but rather MYGGR grew by 1.85%, thus explaining a DKK100m or DKK98m trickle. A physical casino saw a marked increase in GGR from DKK30.0m to DKK32.0m over the period of one year. This summated to a 7.0% hike.
Problem gambling in the country
Spillemyndigheden uses two principal responsible gambling initiatives for the report-ROFUS and StopSpillet.
Notably, men accounted for the greater proportion of self-excluded gamblers in February, totalling 77.2% of all persons. Women, meanwhile, accounted for 22.76%. The number of self-excluded persons remained about constant during the course of the year, with a total increase of 1,500 persons over the course of the year. In the following year, it totalled 46,152 and 48,685.
The majority of the people who called StopSpillet between the ages of 18 and 35 were men. Half the number had problematic gambling issues. Earlier today, iGB stated that since its launch on January 1, it has fielded 2933 inquiries, with large percentages of callers having problematic gambling habits.
The players alone were responsible for just over 1,650 inquiries, representing 56% of the total. About 1,150 inquiries, representing 40% of the total, came from the relatives of players. In about half of these, it was a parent who contacted StopSpillet.4 The remaining 4% of calls came from practitioners.
At this time, Stopspillet revealed that 67% of their calls concerned online casinos and betting. A further 20% of the concerns involved in-person bets and slot games, while players also mentioned poker and land-based gambling.
Latest reports from StopSpillet contain data from May, showing that Spillemyndigheden has unearthed that 88% of the callers involved made their first bet at 25 years or younger.
In Denmark, the legal age limit to play for money is 18; nevertheless, 50% of callers made their first bet before the age of 17. Research released back in November revealed that 4% of calls to StopSpillet were made by players under the age of 18.
Gambling in Denmark: information and opportunities for responsible gaming. Learn more about it at danskecasino.net.