Swedish Gambling Regulator Warns Licensed Operators

Once again, the Swedish Gambling Regulator or Spelinspektionen, has issued an official and final warning to all the iGaming operators stating that if they do not respect the state’s conditions…

… they will suffer financial consequences or put themselves at risk of completely losing their license.

According to the law, the regulator can do this without warning, so the companies must comply.

Why Are They Doing This?

Since regulating their online market at the beginning of 2019, Sweden has required betting operators to respect a self-exclusion rule. However, s keep complaining that they continue to receive marketing materials to online betting websites…

…despite having opted in for the self-exclusion feature.

Self-Exclusion Rule

The regulatory body says that all s who don’t wish to participate in wagering can block themselves from it…

…and all licensed operators have to make sure that their services are not accessible to those people.

As previously stated, if the operators don’t follow the strict rules, they can receive a penalty or worse, completely lose their license to operate in Sweden.

More Complaints

But, not obeying a self-exclusion rule is not the only problem. Spelinspektionen noted that players have been protesting because the gambling information and rules are not properly displayed on the websites…

…although the country stated that it is another rule that the operators must comply.

Each company that wishes to obtain a license, or that already has one, must show all relevant information regarding responsible gambling and link all relevant treatment and bodies on each page of its site.

The Fines

Though warnings have been issued in the past, the problem persists and the Swedish regulator must intervene and threaten in a way, because there is no other method left to solve it.

According to the regulatory body, there will be no more warnings, just straightforward penalties or license withdrawals without any notice.

The fines can reach up to 10% of a company’s turnover, as stated by the officials.

“In recent days we have investigated what this is due to, and have found that everything seems to work well with the system. But for some reason, there are a handful of gaming companies that do not meet the requirements set out by law,” Communications manager for the regulator, Anders Sims, commented.

Regulated iGaming Market:

There are 66 approved licenses on the market so far, and the newly-regulated iGaming market was opened in Sweden on the 1st of January 2019…

…so many more companies have yet to be included in the process.

This has been quite a stressful period for both the applicants and employees of Spelinspektionen as they have been working diligently from the beginning of December 2018 to make sure everything is according to the rules.

The officials said they won’t be issuing temporary licenses, so there will be no trial period for any new operator. If they get rejected, then the decision is final.

Source:

“Swedish regulator issues final warning to licensed operators“, igamingbusiness.com, January 23, 2019.