SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
United Lottery Solutions’ (ULS) claim against a Spelinspektionen, Swedish Gambling Inspectorate, fine has been rejected by the country’s Court of Appeal.
The SEK 700,000 (€67,104) penalty was imposed in 2019 after ULS breached laws relating to betting on lottery games, with the Inspectorate maintaining that the Lottoland subsidiary’s actions were not covered by its gaming licence.
Spelinspektionen asserted that the operator had offered players the opportunity to bet on the outcome of the lottery draws conducted by Svenska Spel, the state-owned organisation with exclusive rights to the Swedish lottery market. ULS subsequently took the fine – and the warning that came with it – to the Administrative Court in Linköping in 2020.
Rejecting the appeal, the Court stated that the firm had “offered betting on the outcome of a lottery without the consent of the licensee who provides the lottery in Sweden and offered games in such a way that it appeared that the company organised a lottery instead of offering betting on it.”
Upon taking its case to the Appeals Court, the most recent decision also rejected the ULS claim, with the institution agreeing with the prior court as well as the Inspectorate that the firm had breached its licensing conditions by offering betting on lottery outcomes without consent.
Additionally, the concluded that ULS ‘offered games on lottery digital scratch cards for which it does not have a license and that the Swedish Gaming Inspectorate had reason to decide on a warning and a penalty fee.’
The case is the third against Spelinspektionen to have been rejected by the Swedish Court of Appeals this month, after the body dismissed claims by NGG Nordic and SkillOnNet.
Both companies were found to have violated the Swedish bonus ban with penalties imposed on the operators of a SEK 14 million (€1,342,096) fine each upheld.
Meanwhile, the upholding of the fine against ULS marks the second regulatory sanctioning of a Lottoland operator, as the firm’s EU Lotto brand was hit with a £760,000 penalty for social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) in the Autumn of last year.
