Swedish gaming association blasts proposal for ban on bonuses
BOS has criticised the proposal made by Svenska Spel and ATG.
Sweden.- BOS, the Swedish Trade Association for Online Gambling, has laid out its opposition to a proposal for a ban on all bonuses on the Swedish gambling market. The CEOs of former monopoly operators Svenska Spel and ATG had made the proposal in an op-ed in one of Sweden’s main newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet, on November 7.
BOS has now responded with a piece in the same newspaper. It argues that a ban on bonuses for gaming in Sweden would unilaterally benefit Svenska Spel and ATG commercially at the cost of poorer consumer protection. It says that a bonus ban would contribute to an accelerated transition from legally licensed gambling to unregulated unlicensed gambling.
“The elephant in the room for consumer protection is that consumers are to such a large extent absent from the legally licensed part of the gambling market,” BOS secretary general Gustaf Hoffstedt wrote. “Instead, they have chosen the unregulated unlicensed market to an alarming extent, partly because of the very generous bonus systems offered there.
“We should not have that kind of excesses with sky-high bonuses in the licensed market, but to completely ban any form of moderate bonus offer is to give up the fight of defending the licensed gambling market and its consumer protection,”
In their original article, Anna Johnson of Svenska Spel and Hasse Lord Skarplöth of ATG said that bonuses could lead to gambling problems. They also suggested that bonuses were particularly appealing to younger people, attracting them to gambling and causing long-term issues.
They noted that, according to a report from the Swedish Association for Alcohol and Drug Education, gambling among boys in their second year of high school has increased from 27 to 43 per cent in five years.
However, Hoffstedt rejected this link. He said: “We believe that everyone agrees and is concerned that gambling among young people under the age of 18 is a growing problem. But to claim that this is due to the welcome bonuses that are currently offered to adult players, without mentioning how today’s young people learn to play for money through so-called skins and loot boxes in their favourite games, is not serious.”
He said a ban on bonuses would mainly benefit Svenska Spel and ATG themselves since it would limit the promotional options of new players on the market. However, he said a bonus ban could be counterproductive even for them.
“Both of these gambling companies, which emerged from the Swedish gambling monopoly, took significant market shares with them from the start when the Swedish gambling market was re-regulated in 2019,” he said.
“The fact that their competitors, who in many cases start with zero customers on their database, are prohibited from offering a bonus when a new customer is recruited is of course tempting for the old monopolists. But they bite their own tail. Because with demands for further restrictions on the legal licensed gambling market, they can only defend their market share in an increasingly shrinking licenced market.”
“These two companies could have brought together the gambling market, or at least the members of their own trade association, for some common good. However, they ignore this and play solo for the short-term benefit of themselves, but not for Sweden and above all not for consumer protection in the gambling market,” Hoffstedt added.
He stressed the need for “striking a balance between consumer protection and gambling pleasure” to ensure a healthy and attractive licensed gambling market. “The gambling consumers must themselves want to be in the licensed gambling market. If this is not achieved, the entire system will collapse,” he said.
Swedish gambling reforms
Following a review of current legislation, investigator Marcus Isgren has made recommendations for an amended Swedish Gambling Act. They include a recommendation to close a regulatory loophole that has prevented the Swedish gambling regulator from taking action against some unlicensed operators.
In the meantime, the government intends to introduce a ban on licensed gambling operators and gambling agents allowing or contributing to gambling financed with credit. The move, which will apply from April 2026, represents an extension of the ban that currently exists on licensees providing credit for gambling.
Currently, gambling on credit is only banned if the credit is provided directly by a licensed gambling operator or their agents, which means that players can still gamble using credit obtained from other sources. The proposed law is intended to close this gap.
