Sweden's gaming revenue grew only 1.3% in midst of tighter legislation

Sweden’s regulatory body, the Spelinspektionen, report mild third quarter revenue growth compared to the same period the year before. This comes during a time where the regular also has pushed for tighter legislation. 

The Swedish online gambling market has seen a marginal increase in revenue for this year's third quarter, the Spelinspektionen announces.  

The regulator published statistics depicting that the third quarter of this year, ending September 30th, the Swedish gambling market generated just over SEK6b (US$700.5m), an increase of 1.3% from the same period in 2019.  

Promisingly, net sales from commercial online gaming and betting have shown growth from the second quarter to the third quarter of 2020, increasing by 2.19%, and exceeding values in the first quarter of 2020. This amounts to a 5.8% increase year-on-year to SEK3.69bn for 2020 so far. 

This notably comes after the controversial SEK5,000 casino deposit cap on online games set to last until June 2021, drawing criticism from operator association Branscheforenigen för Onlinespel (BOS) and the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA). 

Sweden’s state-run gambling operator Svenska Spel, owner of the Casino Cosmopol, saw no sales for both the second and third quarters of 2020 following close downs due to the pandemic. Moreover, the new restrictions introduced by Sweden in July targeting bonus and spending limits, in bid to protect vulnerable customers, are predicted to cut the company’s Sport and Casino revenue by roughly SEK26m in the final quater. 

Nonetheless, sales from the state-run Svenska Spel’s lottery and slot machine operations had a great third quarter, rising 13.9% from the previous quarter and 7.7% from 2019.  

The Spelinspektionen have pushed for tighter legislation this year, penalising online operators who don’t adhere to the outlined standards. The most recent warning and penalty was aimed at Swedish online gaming operator XC Gaming Sweden Ltd on the basis of unauthorised bonus offers. The penalty fee to be paid by XC totals SEK5m (€489,000). 

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