Denmark's Decisive Action: A Crucial Lesson for Finland's Gambling Market

Last week we asked whether Finland should be looking more to Denmark or Sweden when shaping its online gambling market. If the answer wasn’t clear enough, this week Denmark shouted it from the rooftops.

The Danish Gambling Authority just secured a court order to block 178 illegal gambling sites. This wasn’t a cosmetic tweak. It was another clear, practical step to strengthen channelisation and build trust in the system.

It shows what happens when a regulator sets rules, enforces them, and works with the licensed market instead of treating it like the enemy.

Not overregulation. Just regulation that works.

What Denmark is doing isn’t excessive. It’s basic governance: clear rules, proper enforcement, real accountability. If you are licensed, you know where you stand. If you are not, you are out.

This is the kind of clarity that builds stable markets. Sweden is already moving to close loopholes. Denmark is tightening enforcement. And Finland? Still in draft mode, and still, after all this time and access to both data and expert input, stuck debating the wrong things.

Finland keeps talking about problems instead of solving them.

Too much of the conversation is still focused on imagined harms, as if we are back in the days when everyone but Veikkaus was treated as the enemy. There is too little focus on what actually works.

Take the proposed ban on influencer and affiliate marketing, all while making mass media marketing ok. Is the goal really to protect players, or just to manage headlines?

We do not build a functioning system by fearing what already works elsewhere. Denmark offers a model: block illegal access, licence suppliers, enforce clearly and consistently. Sweden is now moving to do the same.

What Finland does next matters. But time is running out for half measures and hypotheticals. What is needed now is not more debate. It is decisions. Real and clear ones.