SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Sweden’s Riksdag (parliament) has announced that new safer gambling measures and market safeguards will be added to the Swedish Gambling Act as of 1 July 2023.
The new measures on safer gambling have been approved following a vote on the latest reforms made by Sweden’s Culture Committee, which put forward its “Healthier and Safer Gambling market recommendations”.
From July, Sweden’s Gambling Act will include a provision on payment service providers (PSPs) to block transactions, including the payment of winnings from unlicensed gambling businesses.
Gambling Inspectorate Spelinspektionen will be granted the authority “to purchase services covertly” to improve the supervision of licensed operators and for better oversight of market activities.
Licensed operators must further comply with new data-sharing requirements to prevent match-fixing, and will be required to disclose necessary information to Sweden’s Police Authority for gambling-related criminal investigations.
In the same session, the Riksdag rejected approximately 50 proposals on gambling issues referred to by the Culture Committee in 2022 based on prior assessments, and considered new proposals to be submitted by Sweden’s conservative coalition government.
As such, the Riksdag dismissed policy motions related to the classification and esports as a sport, alterations to the gaming market’s licensing system and channeling, and regulations for lotteries intended for public benefit purposes.
Further motions rejected included an appeal to add ‘esports abuse’ as a function of Spelpaus.se – Sweden’s national self-exclusion services – for victims of problem gambling abuse and further dismissed a specific proposal aiming to regulate political party lotteries
Spelinspektionen welcomed the Riksdag’s new rules, stating that “decisions demonstrate the Riksdag’s current stance on these matters within the gaming and gambling sectors”.
