SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Spelinspektionen, Sweden’s Gambling Inspectorate, has released its annual report on total gambling turnover for the year ending December 2023.
According to the numbers, Swedish licence holders managed to accumulate a gross gambling revenue (GGR) of SEK 27.1bn (€2.5bn) from the local market, which constitutes a 1% YoY decrease.
State casino turnover, mainly driven by the state-owned Svenska Spel’s Casino Cosmopol, dropped by 11.4%. Turnover from commercial online gambling and bingo halls saw a decline of under 1%.
Svenska Spel recently decided to close the doors of its Casino Cosmopol venues in Gothenburg and Malmö after an evaluation of their service showed that they are “no longer profitable”.
The decision followed lengthy discussions with local trade unions due to the inevitable staff reductions, as well as an in-depth internal review of Svenska Spel’s land-based gambling assets which concluded that the Gothenburg and Malmö venues had been underperforming since 2020.
The new data on the Swedish market shows that net gross gambling turnover (GGT) for igaming and online betting in Q4 23 went up 0.2% YoY close to SEK 4bn.
State lottery and slot games net turnover saw a decline of 14.8% from SEK 1,694mn in Q4 ‘22 to SEK 1,443mn in Q4 ‘23.
State-owned casino games net revenue through Casino Cosmopol was down 33.8% YoY in Q4 – from SEK 139mn in 2022 to SEK 92mn in 2023.Public service games like national lotteries saw a 15.5% quarterly uptick – from SEK 927m in Q4 ‘22 to SEK 1,071m in Q4 23’.
Elsewhere in Spelinspektionen’s report, the end of Q4 ‘23 registered around 104,000 people excluded from gambling through the national Spelpaus.se scheme – a quarterly increase of 5% from the previous corresponding period.
