SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The European Commission (EC) has been notified of ‘Gambling Ordinance’ reforms submitted to safeguard Sweden’s online gambling marketplace further.
The reforms are carried by Finansdepartementet, Sweden’s Ministry of Finance, with a desire to ‘minimise unlicensed gambling’, ‘counter match-fixing’ and provide “greater regulatory controls against black market threats”.
The amendments are principally focused on strengthening the authority and direct controls of Swedish gambling inspectorate Spelinspektionen’s ability to monitor and restrict payment transactions.
As such, Spelinspektionen will be given direct authority to penalise payment service providers (PSP) for facilitating transactions with unlicensed operators.
Swedish-licensed PSPs will be ordered to carry out new due-diligence measures on payments with online gambling operators. In addition, PSPs must ensure that ‘data is preserved’ to help the inspectorate with investigations of unlicensed operators.
Expanding Spelinspektionen authority, the inspectorate must ensure that Swedish Tax Agency is notified of any penalties, bans or suspensions imposed of PSPs as a result of processing unlicensed transactions.
Providing regulatory oversight, the controls of Spelinspektionen will be reviewed bi-annually by a ‘Council for the Gambling Market’ led by Finansdepartementet and the “Financial Supervisory Authority, the Public Health Authority, the Tax Agency, the Consumer Agency and Swedish Police.”
On sports integrity, the EC has been presented with a Finansdepartementet update on “definition of the sports regulations on match-fixing.”
New provisions will allow the Swedish Sports Federation to process operator data (if required) for the governing body to carry out investigations into match-fixing and sports corruption.
Finansdepartementet seeks for its new measures to be adopted into law by July 2023 as part of the government’s ongoing legislative reform of Sweden’s Gambling Act 2018.
