SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Spelinspektion, the Swedish gambling authority, has found GG.Bet to be in breach of Swedish gambling law.
After an investigation, the regulator found that when accessing the domain owned by ASG 360 Services Ltd from a Swedish-based IP address, the pre-selected currency was Swedish Krona (SEK).
Additional details around the investigation revealed that Swedish-based customers were in no way prevented from opening an account with ASG 360 Services. The company currently has no licence for the Swedish market.
Headquartered in Cyprus, the company also operates 20 additional domains that were listed by Spelinspektion. Some have been found to offer marketing in Swedish, the regulator further noted.
Sweden’s rulebook
The Swedish Gambling Act strictly prohibits any type of gambling targeting the Swedish market unless the necessary requirements – one of which is having a local license – are met.
It is within Spelinspektionen’s powers to request the ceasing of unregulated services with immediate effect, which it has also done in this case.
According to the regulator’s rulebook, “the purpose of the regulation is to channel gambling into offers from responsible, reliable and controllable players”.
A key factor for this conclusion not only for ASG 360 and GG.Bet but for all other unlicensed operators is whether their offering is found to be targeting the Swedish market.
This decision is based on three criteria – whether the website contains text in Swedish, whether it offers SEK payments, or whether a Sweden-based player can register and open an account.
“The Swedish Gambling Authority has assessed that ASG 360 Services Limited provides games in Sweden because the company offers SEK as a selectable currency on the gg.bet website, which is pre-selected when accessing the website from a Swedish IP address,” the regulator said.
“This indicates that Sweden is one of the markets that the company is targeting. Furthermore, the company markets itself to Swedish consumers through both direct marketing and marketing via affiliates.”
Spelinspektionen further said that it failed to obtain a response from ASG 360 Services Ltd. SBC News has also reached out to GG.Bet for comment.
