Danish Online Gambling Regulation Delayed

Since Denmark passed laws to liberalize its online gambling industry in June this year, Danish online gambling fans have been champing at the bit to gamble online legally, but they’ll likely have longer to wait.

After a European Court of Justice ruling that Denmark’s online gambling laws were not aligned with European Union agreements, the Scandinavian country decided to toe the EU line, which resulted in the passing of the laws.

However, the process of legalising and regulating online gambling in Denmark has been delayed, and the reason being cited is the large number of gambling license applications being processed by the Danish Gambling Board.

According to reports, the Danish Gambling Board has been inundated with 20 to 30 online gambling applications and as each and every application must be carefully appraised and considered, it has the delayed the process.

One firm applying for a license is Ladbrokes. Said spokesperson, Richardt Funch, ‘The government has only dealt with one monopoly license in 50 years, so there will be a lot of due diligence work and legal requirements.

‘As such, it’s unlikely that we could make it before Christmas. We have received some of the technical requirements, but we still don’t know all the details. So March or April 2011 is looking increasingly likely,’ he said.

Of all the license applications it has received, the Danish Gambling Board will award just two licenses, one for online sports betting and the other for online casino and poker games. Each license application costs €36,000.

The online gambling operators lucky enough to be granted licenses will each be expected to pay an annual base fee of €51,000, as well as between €7,000 and €200,000 depending on gross win, on top of a flat tax of 20 percent.