Last week the EU Commision came the crippled Danish market for online betting advertising to the rescue. Danish laws today sets a monopoly for betting services alltoghether, effectively hindering all competetors to Danske Spil (Danish Gaming) from operating and advertising for their services in Denmark.
The EU Commision “has taken action to put an end to obstacles to the free movement of sports betting services in Denmark, Finland and Hungary” as they so bluntly put it in this press release. The “action” mentioned has form of socalled “reasoned opinions”, the second stage of the infringement procedure which in two months time may lead the Commision to bring the mentioned countries before the European Court, accusing them of obstructing the free movement of services within the EU.
Danish online publishers has suffered greatly by the imposed betting monopoly, being prevented from selling advertising space to other online betting services than Danske Spil. Actually several large publishers have argued exactly like the Commision now does, ignored the restrictions and carried on selling and displaying banner ads from the “intruding” betting services. In reaction to this, the Danish State has taken three of those large online publishers to court, namely the large Danish portal Jubii (Lycos Denmark) and the two leading online newspapers Ekstrabladet and BT. In what must have been a rather interesting courtmeeting only a few hours after the Commission announced their “actions to put an end to the obstacles”, the prosecutor asked the court to pause the trial, until the Commision finally decides whether to take Denmark to the European Court. And so it did.
Via Niels Bo Jørgensen who – asides from being head of administrative services at FDIM – also represents Jubii in the mentioned trial as attorney at law and partner at Johan Schlüter law firm.