bet365 handed hefty penalty fee but evades licence suspension in Sweden

UK-headquartered gambling giant bet365 has been handed a warning and a penalty fee from the Swedish gambling regulator, Spelinspektionen. Hillside, the operating and legal entity name behind bet365, has received two separate penalties for its sports and gaming arms – SEK 40m (£3m) and SEK 4m respectively, for violations in relation to customer care and deposit limits. The violations allegedly occurred between 1 January 2019-19 April 2022, with both sides of bet365’s business allowing players to choose a “no limit” option when setting deposit limits. There was technically a SEK 500m hidden technical limit, but Spelinspektionen ruled that the statutory obligation to set an actual numeric limit has not been met. For context, bet365’s gross gaming revenue (GGR) from its Swedish sports operation was SEK 724.5m in 2021, and gaming GGR came in at SEK 69m. Therefore, if a single player had reached said hidden technical limit, they would’ve increased bet365’s entire GGR by some 63%. bet365 narrowly evades licence revocation Although Spelinspektionen concluded that bet365’s failures were both serious and systematic, the regulator decided to issue a warning rather than revoke their licenses because the companies implemented key corrective actions during and after the audit. Players losing more than SEK 10,000 on a monthly basis will now trigger a manual review, while there are now measures in place that trigger earlier checks for vulnerable groups, specifically young adults (18-24) and returning self-excluded players. The business is also said to have suspended and/or restricted accounts once internal high-risk triggers were logged. Cooperation with the regulator, alongside the factors mentioned above and the fact that sanction fees cannot exceed 10% of an operator’s annual turnover reduced the penalties from SEK 65m and SEK 14m. Sweden is another market in which bet365 is a market leader, ranked as the fourth-largest in the jurisdiction according to the Blask Index, behind the state-owned AB Trav och Galopp (ATG) and Svenska Spel, and the offshore NV casino. Recent years have seen Spelinspektionen clamp down on shortcomings in the licensed market. Infractions by the likes of Betsson, ComeOn Group’s Snabbare, Mr Green, ATG and Kanon Gaming have caught the regulator’s attention over the past 12 months or so. However, some Swedish regulations – which Spelinspektionen enforces – have been criticised by Sweden’s Trade Association for Online Gambling (BOS) due to their lack of evidence-based foundations. BOS is concerned that Spelinspektionen’s regulations are contributing to the stagnation of channelisation rates in Sweden, with the percentage of players finding themselves on black market platforms currently sitting at around 16%. It is valid that BOS would hold these concerns, particularly given that an unlicensed operator is reported to be the third-largest operator in the country. Still, despite the old adage suggesting otherwise, rules are not meant to be broken by regulated operators, and bet365 did that to some tune during 2019-2022. While the final penalty is not one that should significantly impact the gambling conglomerate’s substantial profits, risking its Swedish licence was clearly an oversight. And with regulation becoming stricter in order to reduce gambling harms, alongside taxes rising across many markets globally, an improvement in attention to detail may be necessary.