Danish gambling regulator, Spillemyndigheden has recently successfully managed to petition the country’s telecommunications providers to block access to a number of gambling websites that were reportedly operating illegally in the country. The petition that was filed with the country’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) was upheld by the Copenhagen City Court thus making 10 iGaming sites as well as 15 skin betting sites effective inaccessible to Danish gamblers.
“We use our authority to block websites on an ongoing basis,” Spillemyndigheden director Birgitten Sand explained. “We do this to protect the gaming providers who are actually authorized to offer games in Denmark, but also to protect the players.”
For this particular case, the regulator’s president further clarified that its main focus is on sites that offer skin betting since they are known to “target children and adolescents under the age of 18.”
Some of the online gambling sites that were casualties of the crackdown included 1xBet which has been blocked alongside other popular sites including Equinox Dynamic’s Nordic Casino, Orientxpresscasino and La Fiesta Casino. Also blocked by the Danish Internet Service Providers are Game Tech Group’s Ramses Casinos and two domains for its Cashpot Casino site, Alpha Interactive Solutions’ Casino Napoli and Mr. James Casino as well as Ph. Casino which is operated by Usoftgaming.
Eradicating Underage Gambling
As mentioned earlier, skin betting sites were the main target of the crackdown – these sites are based on the use of virtual items from video games such as armor and weapons as collateral for gambling. Because of this, people below the legal gambling age are often the main target of these sites. As it turns out, this is not the first time that the gambling regulator was dropping the hammer on such sites – the first time it pursued a similar initiative was in February 2018 but that was clearly not as effective as expected.
With its most recent move, the Danish gambling regulator has assured the public that it has refined and fine-tuned its strategy when it comes to identifying skin betting sites. This strategy helped it to catch more of the illegal sites than it did the first time. According to the reports surrounding the matter, the majority of the sites that were blocked were found to have been offering skin betting on the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO), a first-person shooter that is particularly popular in esports competitions all over the world.
Spillemyndigheden is committed to protecting the country’s citizens from gambling-related harm and in addition to its refined strategies, it will also be for more innovative methods that will help in dealing with the illegal pages while “simultaneously continuing to monitor unlicensed betting and gaming sites targeting Denmark.”
