Sweden implored to make radical changes to online gambling infrastructure
Swedish Equality Commission recommends new centralised, state-led gaming platform and wide-ranging advertising restrictions
The Swedish Equality Commission has recommended all online gambling take place via a centralised, government-monitored platform in its latest report to the Ministry of Finance.
The Commission’s 1,168-page study has suggested funnelling all online gaming activity from licensed companies into one IT platform to “radically improve” the practice in the Nordic nation.
The platform would allow the Swedish government and gambling regulator to holistically monitor online gaming, as well as clearly define the boundaries between licensed and unlicensed operators.
The Commission also proposed additional deposit limits and playing limits, which could be controlled via the state-led platform.
The report argues that in the legislation’s current form regarding deposit limits, players can open a new account with a different operator, negating deposit limits previously set with other operators.
Via the platform, deposit limits would stretch across the entire regulated market and therefore “prevent the player from changing gaming companies and setting a new maximum limit and continue playing”.
On time limits, the Commission suggests potentially closing online gambling at critical times to mitigate dangerous playing behaviours.
The report even cites a link between alcohol consumption and increased gambling rates as the reason for introducing limited operational hours.
It further recommends tightening advertising restrictions on online gambling to bring requirements in line with the tobacco and alcohol industries.
Compulsory warning text across TV and online marketing has been proposed, such as “Most who play lose” and “Children of gambling-dependent parents are at risk of getting off to a bad start [in] life”.
The government has also been implored to use its tax dollars gained from the industry to fund regional and municipal gambling addiction and prevention centres.
Under the remit of the Social Services Act and the Health and Medical Care Act, the Swedish government defined gambling addiction in the same bracket as drug and alcohol, but has failed to provide subsidies to these gambling programmes since 2017.
The report noted that draconian measures could lead to a spike in unlicensed gambling but said without state supervision it would be difficult to develop methods to help protect public health.
The report read: “In the same way as with alcohol policy, the policy needs to focus on preventing abuse through balanced efforts, rather than limiting all gambling. Excessive restrictions or high taxes can lead to an increased share of unregulated gambling.
“However, this presupposes that the public sector has the opportunity to develop methods and gain access to data in order to identify and study risk groups with better precision and thereby be able to develop preventive and treatment methods to reduce individual and societal costs,” it concluded.
Sweden’s online gambling market only regulated in 2019 but the government and regulator (SGA) have both faced criticism for the country’s channelisation rate, which is estimated to be somewhere in the region of 60% according to trade body BOS.