SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Sweden’s licensed gambling market brought in a total turnover of SEK 27.8bn (£2bn) in 2024, according to data from Spelinspektionen.
The gambling regulator highlighted that the amount of players’ stakes – minus the paid out winnings – represented a 2.8% increase compared to the total turnover from the previous year.
Commercial online gaming and betting generated the biggest share of turnover, with a total of SEK 18bn for the whole year – a 5% increase compared to 2023.
This segment was followed by state lotteries and slot machine games – generating a total of SEK 6bn with a 2% YoY increase.
The last remaining metric in the billions was the total lotteries turnover, which stood at SEK 4bn.
Next in line was land-based commercial gaming (e.g. restaurant casino), with a total of SEK 237m, together with bingo – at SEK 196m.
The lowest turnover (SEK 160m), as to be expected, was derived from the operations of state-owned casino gaming, or in other words, the Casino Cosmopol owned by state operator Svenska Spel.
As to why this was an expected outcome, it’s been widely viewed that Casino Cosmopol has been struggling to make profits in the last few years.
Three out of the four venues had their shutters pulled down by Svenska Spel, leaving only the Stockholm branch open – with its future not quite clear yet.
Casino Cosmopol’s headwinds were laid out crystal clear with Spelinspektionen’s GGR report for the full 2023, where it showed that state casino turnover had dropped by 11.4%.
In addition to the increasing accessibility and appeal of online gambling for consumers, the land-based venue also took quite a big hit from COVID-19.
From April 2020 to June 2021, the casino generated zero turnover, only starting to somewhat recover from July 2021 onwards. However, it never managed to climb back to pre-pandemic levels.
