Sweden abolishes gambling monopoly, they consider it a success

At the turn of 2018/2019, the Swedish Gambling Authority decided to abolish Sweden's previous monopoly. Now, more than six months later, the gambling authority believes that the decision was a success.

After the people of Sweden decided to allow foreign gambling companies access to Sweden, the managing director of the state-owned Svenska Spel, Patrick Hofbauer, told VG , that it was a great success both financially and in terms of problem players.

 The new licensing scheme was mostly positive

Sweden's new licensing system has allowed foreign gaming companies to operate in Sweden such as https://casinos-without-license.com/international-casinos/. Many online gambling sites are headquartered in Malta, but that hasn't stopped companies from promoting themselves widely in Sweden , and by the beginning of the year they already had many customers.

"It's much better than before when you had a lot of consumers who were customers of a company in Malta, where the regulation was only about making money. The Maltese regulation is completely frustrating for Swedish consumers," says Swede David Sunden, an economist and PhD from Lakeville Consulting.

With the new licensing system, foreign gambling companies pay taxes like everyone else, and they have to comply with the same rules as Svenska Spel.

Man plays online casino on laptop.
Huge profits from overseas gaming providers

Gaming Inspection recently released new data that shows that about 86 foreign gambling companies are licensed to operate in Sweden. Foreign companies pay a fee to obtain a license, and in addition, they pay both profit and gambling taxes to the Swedish state.

This means that the Swedish state received SEK 1.8 billion in the first half of 2019. DKK in taxes from the gaming industry alone. At the same time, c. 91% of the games that took place in Sweden this year were owned by companies that had a license in Q2 2019. Economist David Sunden thinks these numbers are very positive and indicate that they went in the right direction.

Several Swedes have excluded themselves from gaming

The new licensing scheme has not only benefited financially; it has also benefited troubled players. In the last quarter of 2018, about 21,000 Swedish consumers opted out of gambling at Svenska Spel. With the new rules, consumers can now exclude themselves from all 86 licensed companies at once through spelpaus.se. If they close their license at one location, they will not be able to continue with any of the other companies. They could before the law changed.

In the third quarter of 2019, 39,000 Swedes excluded themselves. Anders Sims, communications manager at the Gambling Inspectorate, believes the new legislation has provided better protection for problem gamblers, and he says, "This would not have been possible before the law changed in the New Year. And the gaming companies are noticing it in their accounts. I guess there are the old big players who are done."

It's not all positive: marketing has exploded

The new online casinos on this site https://casinos-without-license.com/new-online-casinos/ brought good results in Sweden and the general satisfaction with the liberalization of the Swedish gambling market, the Norwegian state gaming company Norsk Tipping is still struggling to maintain a monopoly on gambling. This is due, among other things, to the fact that they are afraid of ending up in marketing chaos, as they did in Sweden.

Even before the beginning of the year, there was a huge amount of advertising for online gambling sites in the Swedish media, even in the more "serious" media. This is something you don't want to see happen in Norway. Since the beginning of the year, marketing has become so popular that Sweden has had to impose stricter legal regulations in this area. In particular, Google and social media have been using an extremely large amount of marketing material on online gambling sites since the monopoly was lifted.

Tougher laws mean, according to Patrick Hofbauer of Svenska Spel, that the number of license holders in Sweden will decrease in the future. This is because the new rules mean that all 86 licensed companies will not be able to do profitable business in Sweden. Hofbauer also agrees with Sanden that there are signs that the new legislation is a step in the right direction. However, it's hard to say how things will go in the future, Hofbauer says.