Report: More than 60% of Swedish sanctions appealed by operators

More than half of regulatory action handed out by the Swedish Gambling Authority (SGA) in 2020 was appealed in court, according to latest data from Sweden’s State Treasury report.

The annual report revealed that 63% of the 52 regulatory cases where the SGA imposed either a fine or a warning since re-regulation in 2019 were then challenged by operators through lawsuits.

The SGA initiated 123 supervisory cases into operators between 2019 and 2020, dismissing 71 of them.

It states that while there is adequate case law in allowing these cases to be contested, the SGA expends a lot of resources fighting these cases in court.

“The SGA also feels that they need to work a lot with ongoing supervision of individual companies and that it is difficult to obtain supervision that functions normatively for the entire industry,” said the State Treasury report.

“Given the relatively large number of gaming companies operating in the Swedish gaming market and that the SGA’s resources are limited, the State Treasury believes it is one of the obstacles to effective supervision,” the report adds.

The report also suggests the regulator encounters difficulties in trying to stop unlicensed gambling sites due to a lack of necessary tools to block Swedish consumer access to these firms.

As an example, the report pointed towards banning orders issued against 23 unlicensed operators, suggesting that 19 of these offshore operators are still targeting the Swedish market.

In addition, the report claims operators would benefit from more information from and dialogue with the SGA, while increasing knowledge among players about unlicensed gambling may also be beneficial.

“This may be partly due to the fact that the gaming companies have experience of exercising authority in other countries that may be different from how authorities work in Sweden,” the report states.

“The SGA emphasises that in some cases the expectations have been impossible to live up to, because Swedish authorities cannot give advance notice of how individual gaming companies must act,” it adds.

State Treasury officials also examined the role of the Swedish Consumer Agency and its cooperation with the SGA in areas concerning gambling and gambling advertising.

The report suggests gambling advertising has been given a higher priority by the SCA since re-regulation, but claimed it was difficult for the SCA to make a practical impact on operator ads due to a lack of experience in regards to what constitutes “moderation in marketing”.

However, the State Treasury said the cooperation between the two entities was “satisfactory”.