Denmark’s Gambling Bill Targets Betting Ads and Affiliates

Key Points

• Bill L 37 is reviving Denmark’s expired gambling reforms, with the first parliamentary debate set to take place on 22 October 2026.
• Let’s be clear: sports betting ads would be gone for good, not just for the breaks. They’d vanish for the entire live sports broadcast, plus 10 minutes either side of it.
• Come July 2027, affiliates might just find themselves losing out on that revenue share income, even if they’ve got contracts signed years ago.

Denmark’s Gambling Crackdown Has Survived The Election And Is Back On The Agenda

Most bills just quietly disappear when the parliament dissolves, but Denmark’s gambling reform is a different story altogether. Minister for Taxation and Growth Jakob Engel Schmidt has tabled Bill L 37 in the Folketing on 7 October 2026, and it’s reviving the original Bill L 127, which ran out of steam in March when the general election was called. First reading is set for 22 October, but nothing’s certain until the parliament has voted on it.

The bill looks to turn Spilpakke 1 into law, a cross-party deal that was done and dusted back on 24 October 2025. And what lies behind that deal is a pretty worrying statistic: almost 500,000 Danish adults showed some level of problem gambling in 2021.

Sports Betting Ads Would Vanish For The Whole Match

The bit that’s been making the most headlines is that sports betting ads would effectively be gone for good, not just for the breaks in between. They’d stop ten minutes before kick-off, stay off for the whole event and then return ten minutes after. That’s not just TV, by the way; streaming, half-time breaks and live odds shown on screen would all be covered and would have to stop too. But interestingly, live odds displayed inside the stadium during play would be okay, and so would stadium banners and shirt sponsorship.

In fact, the broadcast rule is a bit more nuanced than you might expect. According to the explanatory notes, the channel actually showing the live sport is the one that’s banned, so, for example, TV2 Sport would be okay, but if a match on TV2 Sport is shown on TV2 Charlie, that’s not okay.

And what about the betting ads themselves? Well, they’d have to change gear pretty fast too. No one under 25 would be allowed in a betting ad, and they’d also have to make sure they’re not appealing to under-18s or portraying betting as some kind of lifestyle choice. And there’s a whole new list of people who can’t appear in a betting ad either: things like current and former athletes, actors and online personalities with over 10,000 followers or 100,000 views or more.

The Clause In The Bill That Nobody’s Really Talking About Yet

While all the talk is about the sports betting ads, it’s a quieter bit of the bill that might end up changing things far more: Section 36(3). Under that, operators would no longer be able to pay their marketing partners based on players’ turnover, wins or losses. And the really interesting bit is that this rule also applies to contracts that are already in place, so you can’t rely on a lifetime contract to keep you safe. What matters is when the bet was actually placed, not when the affiliate gets paid. So, if you get a commission in August for bets that were placed in June 2027, then that’s okay, but if the bets were placed in July, then that’s out of order.

So what does this mean? Well, for affiliates, it’s likely to mean that fees per referred visitor will be the order of the day, nudging them towards a business model based on click payments that completely ignore losses; not a great position to be in, if you ask me.

Operators Would Have A Legal Duty To Act

Operators would have to monitor the conduct of players and intervene immediately if any indications of damage emerged. They would maintain written procedures, test the effectiveness of their prevention methods, and train employees and retailers. Land-based lotteries for charitable and political purposes would remain outside this new legal duty.

The fines would increase in line with the turnover of the company behind each breach. The online fines would mirror the eight gross gaming revenue bands determining the annual licence fee. For some premeditated land-based breaches, the minimum fine would be DKK 60,000, with a doubling of the fine on the next occasion to DKK 80,000. On the third occasion of such a breach, the operator would be expected to lose its licence.

New Tools Against Unlicensed Operators

Spillemyndigheden would have the power to visit premises without a court order in case of suspicion of unlicensed gambling activities. The authority could also block the websites which, viewed as a whole, lead Danish players to unlicensed operators. Operating a gambling website without a licence could attract fines or a six-month imprisonment or even one-year imprisonment in severe cases.

Those powers would support enforcement that has become more active in recent years. The authority’s 2025 report on illegal gambling lists 334 websites blocked under a court order, compared to 162 in 2024. The increase is due to the greater focus rather than a growing illegal market, according to the regulator. Website blocking has also proven to be effective: 178 websites blocked in June 2025 saw their number of visits drop by 34% within six months.

Six Additional Months For The Industry

Should the parliament approve, the law will come into force on 1 January 2027. The advertising regulation and the duty of care would come into force on 1 July, followed by land-based changes on 1 October. The lapsed version planned to introduce marketing regulations on 1 January, so the operators would get six extra months.

Those deadlines depend on several months of preparatory work done in Brussels. Denmark officially informed the European Commission in January, and the standstill period expired on 14 April 2026. This notification also aimed at slot machines that mislead players by presenting losing bets as winning ones, in addition to limitations on welcome bonuses and VIP programmes. L 127 reached the parliament on 25 February and lapsed shortly after the election announcement.

The State Expected To Lose Money, And Some Players Too

The costs are high: the bill admits it may lead to some regulated spending being redirected to offshore jurisdictions that are not taxed. According to the report by iGaming Business, the live sport ban may result in losses of up to DKK 15 million in state revenue in 2027. As for the following years (from 2028), the losses will amount to approximately DKK 25 million each year. Meanwhile, the forecast suggests that including the dice and wheel games in the online casino portfolio would provide up to DKK 10 million additional revenue per year.

In his interview for the same outlet, Morten Rønde, managing partner of Nordic Legal, said he was “shell-shocked” after seeing the bill for the first time. “In all the proposals that are made, there’s no link to any evidence that this is something that will help gambling addiction,” he added. However, the political pressure pushes in a different direction: some Danish political parties explicitly support introducing an advertising ban.

Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen, the tax minister who signed the original agreement, thought quite differently about the reforms in October 2025. She called them “a very important first step in dealing with an overly aggressive gambling market”.

Expert Analysis: Denmark Shouts About Football And Whispers About Real Changes

We consider the live sport ban a political gimmick, and the forecast of the ministry also confirms it. It suggests that the marketing volume may be reduced only slightly, since operators will just redirect their expenses elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the ban on revenue sharing deserves much more attention: paying the affiliates from player losses incentivises precisely such behaviour as the newly introduced duty of care should prevent. The analysts of iGaming Times think that this regulation goes further than most of the regulations in Europe concerning affiliate pay.

Our main worry is who gets affected and when. Many players are referred to the licensed brands with the help of affiliates, but the government wants to close this channel and expects money to be redirected offshore. According to Anders Dorph, the director of Spillemyndigheden, too many restrictions make it “impossible for them to compete”.

Copenhagen is clearly counting on better blocking to keep it under control, but its own data gives hope: the same regulator admits that illegal gambling is developing in Discord and Telegram groups.