Due to the liberalization of online bingo from 1 January 2018, the Danish Gambling Authority (DGA) is currently working on an update to its certification program.

An updated version will be published later this week. The DGA knows that a number of interested parties are awaiting the updated requirements, so these will be specified here.

The requirements in the certification program will reflect the requirements in the executive order. Here are the most significant:

• Only online bingo with 75, 80 or 90 numbers/symbols is allowed.
• Bingo cards for games with 75 numbers/symbols must have five times five squares.
• Bingo cards for games with 80 numbers/symbols must have four times four squares.
• Bingo cards for games with 90 numbers/symbols must have three times nine squares.
• The sale of bingo cards cannot start until 30 minutes before the game starts.
• There must be at least three seconds between the draw/presentation of each number/symbol
• The player cannot select numbers/symbols for the bingo card themselves or make changes to their bingo cards. The players are however allowed to select bingo cards between a number of bingo cards randomly generated by the gambling system.
• Both manual and automatic marking of drawn numbers/symbols must be possible.
• The game must end when the first player has a full bingo card.

The specification above is with reservation for the content in the final executive order, which will come into force on 1 January 2018.

The DGA is aware of and appreciate the fact that it will be very difficult to have games tested and inspected before the end of the year. The DGA must, however, point out that whether or not a bingo game is tested, it must comply with requirements in the coming executive order.

The regulated gambling market in Denmark reached a 9.3 percent revenue rise during the third quarter and achieved record figures.

The regulated gambling market reported record revenue from both online and land-based companies in Denmark and reached US$237 million during the third quarter. Said figure was up 9.3 percent from the same period last year and 2.4 percent from the second quarter and was driven by overall sports betting revenue’s US$91.5 million.

Sports betting was up 9 percent year-on-year and recorded 50.5 percent of its wagers through mobile channels. The rest was divided in land-based wagering (33.4 percent) and desktop online revenue (16.1 percent).

Local regulated online casino revenue posted US$72.35 million and was up 20 percent year on year but was weaker than second quarter’s US$72.67 million. Slots drove the numbers with two thirds of the total figure, while roulette reported 15 percent and blackjack 12 percent.

Online poker revenue was down 6.4 percent to US$5 million and dropped by the fourth straight quarter. Meanwhile, land-based casinos kept their revenue steady at US$15.07 million, just like last year.

Danish state-owned operator Danske Spil has migrated to a new gaming system supplied by Scientific Games.

The conversion from the Danish Lottery’s legacy system to the new system went live earlier this year and will support Danske Spil’s multi-channel environment.

Scientific Games will also provide 24-hour a day systems’ operations from fully redundant European centralised data centres.

Having won the competitively bid gaming systems contract from an incumbent supplier, Scientific Games said that the conversion will significantly advance the Lottery’s retail, web and mobile channels.

“We knew that we were looking for a flexible, channel-agnostic system for our Lottery; our strategy for the lottery market is aggressive and progressive, and a new system is a core part of that strategy,” – said Danske Spil chief executive Susanne Mørch Koch. 

“We need our technology platforms to be scalable, so that we can ramp up or down and add hardware components that would not require replacing the entire system, this has been a must-have requirement for our new lottery solution.”

Pat McHugh, senior vice-resident, global lottery systems at Scientific Games, commented: “There is a great deal of excitement and collaboration surrounding this conversion, as we expand our support to welcome Danske Spil to the Scientific Games’ lottery systems family.

“Scientific Games has aligned with Danske Spil’s business goals to deliver our most advanced, open architecture system in Denmark with flexible, scalable technology that will support the Lottery’s growth.”

Scientific Games supplies lottery draw, instant, internet, mobile, video lottery and sports wagering technology systems worldwide and is the leading lottery systems provider in Europe.