Danish GGR climbs 23% in February as land-based sector returns to provide timely boost

Gambling GGR for Denmark’s four key verticals came to DKK511m (€68.7m) in January and DKK538m (€72.3m) in February as the return of the land-based sector saw revenues continue to climb year-on-year.

The Danish Gambling Authority (Spillemyndigheden) publishes monthly statistics on GGR across the sports betting, online casino, gaming machine and land-based casino sectors to give a summary of overall gambling growth in Denmark.

January of 2022 was a good month for online operators in the country, with sports betting GGR growing 10.1% to DKK228m and online casino revenue up a more modest 1.2%, to DKK261m.

The land-based sector continued to suffer in January, however, with measures relating to the Covid-19 pandemic leaving gaming arcades and land-based casinos closed until the end of the month.

Physical casinos recorded zero revenue during the month, while gaming machines were able to bring in just DKK22m.

All that changed in February however as the land-based sector reopened, with gaming machines providing DKK109m and casinos generating DKK31m in GGR – both figures up from zero in February 2021, when the sector was still shut down.

This was enough to offset declines in other verticals, with GGR across the market in February leaping 22.6% year-on-year to DKK538m, despite a reduction in both sports betting and online casino revenue.

Sports betting GGR fell by 16.7% in February to DKK184m, while online casino was down 1.8% to DKK214m.

Online and land-based casino both outgrew their comparative periods in 2020, suggesting that a return to pre-pandemic levels of GGR is still some way off for both sports betting and gaming machines.

In the full-year 2021, GGR across all verticals increased modestly in Denmark, up 3.5% year-on-year to DKK6.21bn.