Insight
SWEDEN Online Legislation
Maria McDonald Maria McDonald is a founding partner of Nordic Gambling. Maria is specialised in all legal matters related to gambling, media and sponsorships but also has experience of working with dispute resolution, IT and data protection. Before Nordic Gambling, Maria has during the majority of her career, worked as in-house legal counsel and as the Head of Legal in Unibet and in Lagardère Sports. Maria has also previously acted as Chairman of the Danish Online Gambling Association (DOGA) and treasurer of the Swedish Branschföreningen för Onlinespel (BOS).
josef@nordicgambling.com
maria@nordicgambling.com
www.nordicgambling.com
Re-rolling the dice - has online benefitted from the change?
It’s been two years since the Swedish gambling market re-regulated with the implementation of the Swedish Gambling Act. Nordic Gambling experts, Maria McDonald and Josef Rotter, appraise and evaluate the challenges that still lie ahead
Josef Rotter Josef Rotter joined Nordic Gambling as an Associate in 2020 and holds an LLM from Umeå University. Before joining Nordic Gambling Josef worked with M&A at one of Sweden’s top rated law firms. Josef has experience of working with a wide range of queries regarding the Swedish gambling industry..
The Swedish Gambling Authority has issued new regulations and guidelines which entered into force January 1, 2021. The new regulations and guidelines include restrictions and bans on certain forms of betting to prevent the manipulation of results (e.g. match-fixing).
P56 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
Sweden implemented the Swedish Gambling Act on January 1, 2019 with the aim of providing regulation based on a licensing system in which all operators in the Swedish gambling market were to have a licence to offer gambling services to Swedish customers. Tus, operators without a licence would be excluded from the Swedish market. 62 licences regarding online gambling were approved during the first three months of the regulation and at the moment 72 companies have received licences to offer commercial online gambling and/or betting.
We are currently seeing a certain decline in the demand for licences in the Swedish market. Of course, large operators were early with their applications for licences and considering there is a certain matureness in the market. However, recent developments have also raised questions from gambling operators as to the benefits of holding a Swedish licence.
INCREASING RESTRICTIONS ON LICENSED OPERATORS Further restrictions on operators with a licence have been imposed due to Covid-19 with temporary requirements of, for example, weekly maximum deposit limits of SEK5,000 (approximately €500), mandatory log-in limits and a maximum value of welcome bonuses (retention bonuses are prohibited)
of SEK100. Te restrictions entered into force on July 2 2020 and were recently prolonged until end of June 2021.
Furthermore, the Swedish Gambling Authority has issued new regulations and guidelines, which entered into force January 1, 2021. Te new regulations and guidelines include restrictions and bans on certain forms of betting to prevent the manipulation of results (e.g. match-fixing) within sports as well as the reporting of suspected manipulation.
In addition to the statement of the Gambling Act that licences may not allow gambling on events where the majority of the participants are under 18 years of age, the new regulations from the Swedish Gambling Authority extends the scope on when it is prohibited in this regard. Hence, betting may, after January 1, 2021, not be offered on an individual performance in a match, competition or tournament if the individual is underaged. Individual performance refers to all performance by an individual such as scoring, winning a race, bookings etc.
Te new regulations to prevent match-fixing also prohibits betting on football matches in lower leagues and on so-called negative events. Furthermore, in December 2020, the Swedish government published
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