SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The Spelinspektionen, the Swedish Gambling Authority (SGA), has charged two iGaming operators substantial penalties for failing to adhere to player protection standards.
Glitnor Services and Roar Vegas have been respectively charged SEK 28m (£2.2m) and SEK 8m (£616,000) for breaching the duty of care provisions of the 2018 Swedish Gambling Act.
In Glitnor’s case, the breaches occurred on its Lucky Casino platform and were uncovered by the SGA during a routine monitoring check. An SGA survey of 12 Lucky Casino customers found that 10 had not been adequately interacted with despite showing signs, in the regulator’s view, of gambling-related harm.
“The breach consists in the fact that the company has not helped 10 of the 12 customers examined to reduce their gambling when there was reason to do so,” the SGA’s statement read.
“Glitnor has not taken sufficiently effective measures to counteract excessive gambling,
has not followed up on the effect of the measures taken and has not acted sufficiently promptly.
“The company should therefore be given a warning combined with a penalty fee.”
During the investigation, Glitnor protested that Swedish data protection rules had made its job of identifying problem gambling more difficult.
The company has found itself in a situation where it has to ‘handle information about players that is considered to be very sensitive’, the SGA acknowledged.
Regardless, although the SGA has noted the difficulties faced by the company, the regulator still believes that the excessive gambling seen among the 10 customers and the lack of reaction to this justifies a warning, action plan and penalty.
Turning to Roar Vegas, a similar infraction was noticed at the LeoVegas-owned casino brand, though on a smaller scale. In comparison to 10 out of 12 at Glirnot’s Lucky Casino, three out of 12 Roar customers were ‘not sufficiently helped’ to reduce their gambling.
In its assessment, the firm noted that some customers had very high thresholds, which could have indicated excessive gambling. However, the operator remained adamant that it had not violated its duty of care requirements and asserted that the SGA had placed too much emphasis on certain risk factors.
The SGA, however, concluded that the firm had ‘disregarded its obligations under the Gambling Act by violating the duty of care’ and issued the firm with an SEK 8m penalty based on its annual turnover.
The charges come just a couple of weeks after the SGA banned an offshore betting operator due to the firm being active in Sweden without a licence. Recent market reports show that Sweden is still struggling with some market adjustments after new regulations came into effect in 2019.
