The government has urged Spelinspektionen to work more closely with Finansinspektionen to fight illegal gambling.

Sweden.- The national gambling regulator Spelinspektionen will work more closely with the Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen) to fight illegal gambling in the country. The government believes closer collaboration would provide more control over gambling transactions.

The government noted that earlier this year Spelinspektionen gained new regulatory powers. Payment providers in Sweden must now provide the authorities with details of the payments they process to help facilitate payment blocking against unlicensed gaming operators.

Payments may be blocked if they pertain to operators that the regulator finds targeting the Swedish market without a licence. Spelinspektionen itself may carry out test purchases to ascertain whether an operator is targeting the country.

Spelinspektionen director general Camilla Rosenberg said: “The strengthened cooperation with the Financial Supervisory Authority will provide good conditions for all tools to be used efficiently, something we see as positive.”

The government has also agreed more funding for Swedish gambling regulator.

Swedish gambling regulator fines Betfair for offering bets on under-21s football

Last month, Spelinspektionen fined Flutter Entertainment’s Betfair SEK4m (€350,804) for offering prohibited football bets. The regulator found that Betfair had offered bets on the youth football league, U21 Allsvenskan.

Sweden’s gambling regulations only permit betting on the country’s four highest football leagues as a measure designed to prevent match-fixing. Spelinspektionen found that bets were offered on 148 U21 Allsvenskan matches in 2021 and 2022, and that 224 customers bet SEK1.1m on 139 of these matches.

Betfair said the bets had only been available on the Betfair Exchange, which matches customers against each other to form odds and bets. The operator takes a commission on the bets. However, it admitted that the presence of this market on the exchange was a breach of Swedish law. It said that it had a manual process of blocking access to prohibited betting markets and that this had failed in these cases.