Swedish gambling regulator fines lottery operator over underage gambling

Spelinspektionen found that Folkspel allowed a minor to take part in a televised lotto show.

Sweden.- The Swedish gambling regulator Spelinspektionen has issued a SEK500,000 (€44,400) penalty fee against the lottery operator Folkspel for allowing a minor to gamble. The regulator had received several complaints reporting that the operator had allowed a minor to take part in the televised lottery show Bingolotto on December 23.

Folkspel itself reported the incident to the regulator in January, confirming that an underage person had called to the show via its phone line and had participated in a game. The regulator’s investigation found that the operator had no technical procedures or routines in place to verify identity or age when players phone.

Folkspel said it had no reason to suspect that the player was underage and noted that its conditions state that ticket purchasers must be 18. However, it recognised that there had been issues in the past with underage players calling in using tickets belonging to parents or guardians.

Following an internal review, Folkspel has now introduced measures to try to prevent future breaches. From March 31, it has introduced manual age checks before players can participate in Bingolotto. It is now working on a technical solution to allow players’ social security numbers to be checked automatically before they can play.

Earlier in the week, Spelinspektionen issued a warning and a SEK 7m (€623,000) penalty fee to Kanon Gaming. The regulator said it had audited the regulator to check how it complied with duty of care requirements under the Swedish Gaming Act.

Spelinspektionen said its review looked at how the operator handled suspicions of excessive gambling among a number of customers and what measures were taken when this was identified. It said Kanon did not have appropriate procedures to protect customers against excessive gambling and had not helped customers reduce their gambling when there was reason to do so.