On the 1st July 2010 new gambling laws were introduced in Denmark to allow for legal gambling in various forms. The new structured system of regulation requires operators of online gambling websites to be licensed and the fee is around 140,000 euros and operators also pay a 20% tax on gross revenues.

The new legislation does not go as far to dismantly the old Dansk Spil gambling monopoly; ahd the group will benefit from a six month lead on the online gambling industry, as other applications will not be granted licenses until January 2011. Dansk Spil has already reached agreement with Party Poker to use their software.

Operators must have an office this is physically located in Denmark, and must have a reporting system in place that complies with Danish tax rules. The licensing scheme will initially cover casino and poker rooms, and online sports betting will be handled separately. It is expected that legislation will cover online bingo in the near future.

As with many other countries such as France and Australia that have recently reviewing online gambling legislation it is not entirely clear how the Danish government intend to deal with unlicensed operators. Reports have suggested that one of the ideas involves IP blocks at the ISP level. It has been suggested that these blocks would be aimed at both sites that offer unlicensed gambling services in Denmark as well as site that promote them.

While it maybe one of the better ways of tackling the problem, the difficulty with blocking IP addresses of offenders is that in many cases you also block the IP addresses of other sites that are not related to gaming.