Over 30,000 people have registered with the Swedish self-exclusion register, Spelpaus.se, as reported by the country’s national gambling regulator Spelinspektionen.
Gambling operators within Sweden are obliged to integrate the Spelpaus.se service as part of their licence conditions, with those who fail to do so facing penalties and potentially having their licence revoked.
Having been rolled out on 1 January, coinciding with the launch of the country’s regulated market, the self-exclusion scheme gives Swedish customers the option to block themselves from gambling sites and services in addition to the ability to opt out from marketing communications.
The service has since been integrated across a number of licensed online casinos, slot games and lotteries, as well as land-based services including retail stores and bingo halls.
Spelinspektionen has recently revamped its operational set-up, and has since stated that it will simply not tolerate operators’ disregarding Spelpaus.se ( translation – ‘game-break’) provisions, made mandatory under Sweden’s new online gambling licensing framework.
A number of operators have already been identified by the regulator for failing to integrate the scheme across their platforms.
Genesis Gaming and Paf Consulting has recently been hit with a penalty from the regulator after a number of consumers that had self-excluded informed the regulator they were still able to gamble on sites operated by the pair.