Sweden’s watchdog reveals 10k people self-excluded

The local regulator revealed the number of people that have blocked themselves from accessing sites.

Sweden.- The Spelinspektionen, Sweden’s local gambling regulator, revealed this week that 10k Swedish people have registered with spelpaus.se, which saves the names of those who desire to exclude from the new regulated online gambling market. The self-exclusion registry took effect on January 1, 2019.

The regulations were first outlined last year, and all operators were advised to check the Spelpaus program before new marketing campaigns or allowing their customers to play. The operators must also feature a link to Spelpaus on their sites.

The regulator said that the vast majority of the 10k people that have registered at Spelpaus have chosen to shut down until further notice, but there is a possibility of turning off for a shorter limited period.

Spelinspektionen said that during the first week of the new regulations in place, it has discovered shortcomings in the self-exclusion area. The regulators said that it is about licence holders that do not have an active connection to Spelpaus, which means that suspended players have been able to play with those companies.

Spelinspektionen’s communications manager Anders Sims said that this has been investigated but for some reason there are a handful of gaming companies that don’t meet the requirements set by the law, and that it will send a letter urging them to submit an explanation of why suspended players have been able to access their services.