Gauselmann Group’s Cashpoint sports betting brand has acquired Tipico’s brick-and-mortar betting operations in Denmark. Under the recently sealed deal, Cashpoint has assumed ownership over three betting outlets in the country’s capital city, Copenhagen, and one betting shop in Odense, located on the Fünen Island.
The acquisition has thus secured Cashpoint with the largest share of Denmark’s privately-run land-based sports betting market. The move is expected to further solidify the betting operator’s position in the country.
Cashpoint, owned by the Gauselmann Group, a gambling group with operations in a number of European markets, was established in 1996. It has both land-based operations in the form of more than 5,000 betting outlets and online betting operations in a number of regulated jurisdictions.
In Denmark, the brand has registered excellent growth over the past year. It recently reported a 30% organic growth for the first six months of 2017 as compared to the same period of the previous year. According to the latest figures released by the operator, its betting volume in the Nordic country totaled €100 million for the first half of the year, a result it feels particularly happy about given the relatively small size of the local market.
Denmark’s Gambling Market in Q1
In 2012, the country implemented significant changes in its gambling industry, which it called liberalization of the local market. Generally speaking, Denmark opened its market for private operators, both local and international ones. It can be said that the market attracted quite a lot of interest from outside its borders.
Following the sweeping reform in the Danish Gambling Act, the provision of a number of gambling options was legalized and liberalized. Currently, lotteries of different nature, online and land-based casinos, gaming machines, and sports betting as well as betting on horse, dog, and pigeon races are the gambling services the provision of which is legal under the country’s gambling law.
According to industry figures released by the Danish Gambling Authority, Spillemyndigheden, Denmark’s legal gambling market was worth DKK1.395 billion during the first quarter of the year, down from DKK1.416 billion for the prior-year corresponding period.
Betting contributed the largest share of the revenue generated during the reviewed three months. Revenue from that particular sector totaled DKK517 million, down from DKK565 million year-on-year.
Denmark is currently the only Nordic country with a regulatory framework that allows international online gambling operators to apply for a license from the local regulator and to service local players in a regulated environment.
Sweden may follow in its neighbor’s footsteps after a report on the state of the country’s gambling industry recommended the regulation of online gambling services. A new regulatory framework is to be crafted by Swedish lawmakers, following the report’s publication and is expected to be implemented in early 2019. Sweden’s gambling market was valued at SEK22.186 billion in 2016. Unregulated online gambling operators were believed to have generated the amount of SEK5.1 billion last year or almost a quarter of the overall revenue reported for the period.
