Swedish gambling revenue reaches €569m in Q1
The figure is level with Swedish gambling revenue in the same quarter last year.
Sweden.- The Swedish gambling regulator, Spelinspektionen, has reported that gaming companies with a Swedish license saw a combined turnover of SEK 6.6bn (€569m) in the first quarter of 2023 (players’ stakes minus paid winnings). The preliminary figure remains level with turnover in the same quarter last year.
Online casino gambling generated the majority of revenue at SEK 4.1bn, down very slightly from Q1 2022. State lottery and slot games generated SEK 1.36bn, up from SEK 1.29bn. State casino gaming via Casino Cosmopol generated SEK 126m, a rise of 22 per cent from SEK 103m in Q1 2022.
Other land-based gaming, such as restaurant casinos, generated SEK 27m while games for public purposes generated SEK 812m and community games and bingo SEK 38m.
At the end of Q1, just under 92,000 people were banned from gambling via the exclusion platform Spelpaus.se. This is an increase of 8 per cent compared to the previous quarter.
New powers confirmed for Swedish gambling regulator
Sweden’s legislature has approved new powers for Spelinspektionen. An update to the country’s Gambling Act will strengthen the regulator’s ability to monitor and intervene against unlicensed online gambling operators.
One of the new measures, which will come into force on July 1, will allow Spelinspektionen to make test purchases of gambling services using a hidden identity in order to monitor the activities of operators targeting Swedish players. The government said such undercover monitoring was needed for effective surveillance. Operators must be notified about test purchases as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Spelinspektionen will have new payment-blocking powers that are designed to replace those in the previous version of Sweden’s gambling legislation. The regulator already had the power to block payments to unlicensed gambling operators but said that practical difficulties with the existing regulation made it impossible to carry out.
