By Jim Murphy
Denmark likes to think of itself as a country where institutions work, trust matters and journalism acts as a counterweight to political power. It is a small, highly interconnected society, where public debate is intense but generally grounded in shared assumptions about fairness and responsibility. That self-image makes recent media attacks on licensed online gambling operators all the more troubling — not because they scrutinised the industry, but because they abandoned basic standards of accuracy at a politically sensitive moment.
What unfolded over the past months was not an investigation uncovering hidden wrongdoing. It was the construction of a scandal without a crime — built through insinuation, selective framing and the quiet laundering of unsupported conclusions. At its centre stood not illegal operators, but a regulated business that had done precisely what the law requires: detect suspicious activity and report it to the regulator.
How the story was twisted against Soft2Bet
The media narrative did not emerge in a vacuum. It was driven primarily by TV2 Nord and amplified by affiliated podcast formats, where political urgency and moral messaging routinely trump nuance.
A key example was a TV2 Nord segment titled “Sportsklubber kan blive ramt på pengepungen” (“Sports clubs could be hit in their wallets”). Ostensibly, the report addressed a political proposal to restrict betting sponsorships in sport. In practice, it went further, framing online gambling companies as a direct threat to local sports communities and implying that their presence endangered grassroots funding. What the report did not explain was that the operators involved were licensed, that such sponsorships are legal under Danish law, and that the proposal itself was a political choice rather than a response to misconduct.
This was not neutral reporting. It aligned cleanly with a campaign narrative already circulating in Danish politics: that online casinos are a social ill requiring decisive political action. In an election climate, such alignment matters. It shapes not only what is reported, but how aggressively false conclusions against Soft2Bet are drawn — and how quickly insinuation is allowed to harden into moral certainty.
The escalation continued in podcast media. In a widely circulated episode of the Mediano podcast, a discussion ostensibly about betting advertising in football veered into far more serious territory. Without substantiated evidence, insinuations were made linking licensed operators, including entities connected to Soft2Bet, to foreign criminal networks, with references to so-called “Russian syndicates”. These claims were not supported by regulatory findings, court decisions or documented investigations. They were false.
Crucially, no distinction was made between player-led fraud and operator conduct. No acknowledgment was given to the fact that the Soft2Bet subsidiary at the centre of the controversy had itself reported suspicious betting behaviour to the Danish Gambling Authority, Spillemyndigheden, as required by law. Conjecture was allowed to harden into accusation, and accusation into public belief.
What was actually happening
Away from the Danish media and political cycle, the same events were interpreted very differently. In international reporting and regulatory analysis, the controversy was not framed as evidence of operator misconduct, but as a routine example of how regulated gambling markets are supposed to function.
Across Europe, licensed operators are legally required to monitor betting activity, detect irregular patterns and report them to regulators. In that context, the identification of coordinated or automated player behaviour is not a scandal but a compliance obligation. Failure to act would expose an operator to sanctions or licence withdrawal. This distinction — fundamental to gambling regulation — has been repeatedly underlined in international coverage examining digital betting ecosystems.
In one recent industry analysis published by PSBIOS, The Dark Side of Digital Betting, the authors explain in detail how modern online gambling platforms detect and manage fraud, particularly collusion and automation among players. The analysis makes clear that such activity overwhelmingly originates from players, not operators, and that licensed platforms are incentivised — financially and legally — to prevent it, not enable it. The focus is not moral blame, but system design: how detection, reporting and regulatory cooperation actually work in practice.
A similar logic appears in English-language reporting published by TenSportsTV, which examines the asymmetry of risk in regulated gambling markets. Operators absorb losses, face sanctions, and risk licence revocation if they fail to act, while fraudulent players exploit speed, coordination and anonymity. The conclusion is blunt: in most documented cases, the “house” is not the villain, but the first line of defence.
Elsewhere in Europe, an investigation published on Inkl situates comparable cases within a broader regulatory landscape, describing a quiet but persistent effort by European regulators to curb player-led fraud, illegal operators and unlicensed platforms. Cooperation between licensed businesses and regulators is not portrayed as a warning sign, but as the backbone of enforcement — particularly in Nordic and EU jurisdictions with mature regulatory regimes.
This broader context was largely absent from the Danish coverage — and its absence mattered. In a functioning regulatory framework, compliance often looks counterintuitive to the untrained eye: an operator raises a flag, a regulator investigates, and the public sees “a problem”. But the presence of a report is not proof of wrongdoing. It is frequently proof of monitoring.
In the case at hand, a licensed operator identified anomalous betting activity consistent with coordinated play and reported it to Spillemyndigheden in line with statutory requirements. The regulator initiated its own review. No finding of operator fraud followed. The sequence mirrors standard practice across Europe and North America.
As Neil McArthur, former chief executive of the UK Gambling Commission, has stated publicly when discussing gambling oversight, regulation only works if operators are encouraged to report suspicious behaviour early. Treating reporting as suspicion, he has warned, undermines the entire system.
In the United States, Rep. Dina Titus, co-chair of the Congressional Gaming Caucus, has made a similar point in congressional hearings, arguing that regulated gambling exists precisely so activity can be monitored and disclosed. When compliance is reframed as culpability, she has said, consumer protection suffers.
Academic analysts echo this view. John Holden, professor of business and sports law at Indiana University, has written that media narratives frequently blur a critical distinction. Irregular betting patterns are often portrayed as proof of operator wrongdoing, he notes, when in regulated markets they are usually identified because operators are actively monitoring and reporting.
What distinguishes the Danish episode is not the existence of suspicious betting — such cases arise regularly across regulated markets — but the way those suspicions were reframed. Outside Denmark, they were treated as an example of routine compliance. Inside the country, particularly in broadcast television and podcast formats, they were recast as a moral and political drama, in which the mere existence of an investigation was presented as evidence of guilt.
The mechanics of misinformation
The most troubling aspect of the coverage was not the use of false documents, but the use of false connections. Journalists presented fragments of information that were independently accurate — corporate filings, trademark registrations, historical ownership records — and then added connecting claims that were not supported by evidence.
Readers were shown two real facts and invited to accept a third, unproven conclusion. Because the components appeared legitimate, the inference felt legitimate too. This is how misinformation becomes persuasive without fabricating a single source: authenticity in the materials is used to smuggle in an inauthentic claim.
A related technique was repetition. One insinuation was echoed across formats — television, podcasts, commentary — until repetition itself was mistaken for proof. Another was the flattening of corporate history. Some allegations relied on companies or brands that had once been connected to a broader corporate ecosystem but had been sold years earlier. When historic proximity is treated as evidence of present operational responsibility, time itself becomes a tool of distortion.
This is not technical nit-picking. In regulated industries, timelines are often the central fact. Journalism that ignores time turns history into accusation.
Politics, elections and a convenient target
Why did such weakly supported claims gain traction? The political context matters. Denmark is in an election cycle, and several political actors have made opposition to online gambling a visible part of their platforms. Few industries are as morally convenient to attack. Casinos attract little public sympathy, even when licensed, compliant and tax-paying.
In a small media ecosystem, journalists and politicians operate in close proximity. They share sources, assumptions and normative views about social harm. There is no need to allege corruption or coordination. Narrative alignment alone is enough. A story that confirms an existing political agenda travels faster and encounters less resistance than one that complicates it.
In such conditions, journalists — particularly in broadcast and podcast formats that reward speed and certainty — can become instruments of political messaging, not deliberately and not for payment, but through ideological sympathy and editorial momentum.
Responsibility and consequences
Publishing serious allegations against lawful businesses is not a harmless exercise in debate. In Denmark, as in other European jurisdictions, the dissemination of false claims that damage reputation can carry civil — and in certain circumstances criminal — consequences. Journalists are not exempt from accountability simply because statements are framed as discussion or opinion.
There is also a professional obligation to provide and document a meaningful right of reply. Allegations of this magnitude demand genuine verification, not performative outreach.
The damage is not abstract. Reputations are harmed, partnerships reconsidered, and regulatory cooperation chilled. If licensed operators learn that self-reporting leads to public vilification rather than measured oversight, the incentive to cooperate erodes. That outcome would undermine the very consumer protections politicians claim to defend.
A broader warning
This episode is not about defending gambling as an industry. It is about defending facts — and about remembering what happens when journalism drifts from scrutiny into political service.
Recent European history offers clear cautionary examples. In the United Kingdom, the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed News of the World exposed what happens when journalists abandon legal and ethical boundaries in pursuit of political influence. Reporters were convicted, editors resigned, and a major newspaper was shut down. The consequences extended well beyond the newsroom, triggering parliamentary inquiries and forcing politicians to distance themselves from media practices they had previously tolerated.
France has seen similar consequences when media, politics and unlawful methods collide. Investigations into the conduct and financing of the 2017 presidential campaign of François Fillon demonstrated how violations of electoral law — including the use of illicit support structures and undeclared advantages — can derail a candidacy entirely. Journalists, intermediaries and political actors were drawn into legal proceedings, and the candidate was ultimately forced out of the race.
The lesson from these cases is not that journalism should avoid politics. It is that when reporting crosses the line into coordinated advocacy — when insinuation replaces evidence or regulatory processes are reframed to serve electoral narratives — the consequences rarely stop with reputational damage. Journalists can face legal accountability. Media organisations can lose credibility. And politicians who benefit from such practices can find themselves sanctioned or barred from public office for accepting illegitimate support.
Denmark is not immune to these dynamics. Its media ecosystem may be smaller and more intimate, but the legal principles are the same. Election law does not distinguish between overt campaigning and indirect narrative assistance.
If the current trajectory continues, the damage will extend beyond any single industry. It will reach journalism itself — and the democratic process. History suggests that when accountability eventually arrives, it rarely discriminates between those who spoke and those who quietly benefited from being spoken for.
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