Swedish Market Expands With Growing Pains
Published January 24, 2019 by Lee R
The hammer is likely to fall on some companies on greedy operators in the new Swedish market.
Sweden has already had to issue re-warning restraining newly licensed operators for failure to comply with regulation just implemented this month for the first time ever.
No More Warnings
The country's gambling regulator Spelinspektionen has specified unannounced financial penalties and licence cancellations await those operators who fail to comply.
Complaints Continued
The regulator explains that the new re-warning only days after the original has been spurred by complaints and tip-offs about continued non-compliance.
The Self-Exclusion Imperative
The key directive has been identified as the requirement for all operators to check players’ names against the Spelpaus.se self-exclusion register before clearing them for gambling or advertising mailing lists.
Since last week's warning about the need to carry out these checks, complaints have continued to come in to the authority regarding self-excluded players still being sent marketing materials.
Visible Support Resources
Additional complaints have been logged since the warning regarding violation of the requirement to ensure the prominent display of responsible gaming information with links to relevant treatment and support bodies on each site page.
The Penalties
Spelinspektionen said fines will start at up to 10% of a company’s turnover, with more serious breaches vulnerable to immediate license revocation.
Staying on Point
According to the regulator, the key priority of market re-regulation was not profits but to channel players towards legal and safe gaming options that would push unlicensed sites out of the market.
Spelinspektionen has made clear that this is the last warning to be issued, and delineated penalties would be levied for non-compliance without notice from here on in.
New Licenses
Meanwhile, the new era moves forward. In more positive news, Spelinspektionen announced new online betting and gaming licences to lottery betting operator Lottomatrix, making the Jackpot.com operator the 66th licensee in Sweden on the heels of earlier week licence application approvals for Dreambox Games, Ellmount Gaming, Legolas Invest, LeoVegas’ esports joint venture Pixel Digital and More Tech Group.
Outlook
Spelinspektionen took over the regulation reins from Lotteriinspektionen on January 1st, and immediately took a more proactive approach to enforcement of guidelines, in this tender period in which Sweden launches is liberalised market. It looks like it's first major task is going to be preventatively safeguarding against aggressive operators overeager to gain lead position in the liquid economy of Scandinavia's largest market.
