What responsibility do gambling companies have for customers who gambled away millions of kroner and ended up gambling? The Uppsala district court has to answer that question in a unique case between the gambling company Betsson and a person who has lost 4.7 million.
According to the judgment the man does not get any money back.
For just over three years, the man played for SEK 59 million in total, an average of SEK 1.4 million a month.
Gambling developed into an addiction where more and more new loans had to be financed
the gaming that grew in scale and cost – not just financial.
– In the middle of the night, I could bet SEK 50,000 on a women’s volleyball match in Colombia. If I managed to end the day with a lot of money in the account, I did not enjoy it. At lunch the next day, I was out of everything again, the person has previously told in an interview with Svenska Dagbladet.
The man demanded compensation from Betsson for the losses, including claims that the gambling agreements were invalid and that the companies used his gambling addiction in violation of the law.
On Wednesday, the Uppsala district court announced that the man will not receive any compensation.
“According to the district court’s assessment, the player, who was a so-called VIP customer of the companies, played in a way that indicated that he had gambling problems. However, it has not been considered sufficient to declare the gambling agreements invalid.“, writes the district court.
Asking SEK 4.7 million
In the end, he had lost 4.7 million kroner, and that is the amount he is now requesting to get back in the civil case where the listed gambling company Betsson is on the other side.
The man is represented by Jörgen Hettne, a professor at the department of commercial law at Lund University. Jörgen Hettne does not normally work as an agent, but this goal has a special driving force for him.
– I think the gambling business has gotten out of control and gambling addiction has become a new public disease. I feel for this person, who has now almost lost five million kroner, he tells TT.
Betsson’s CEO Pontus Lindwall has been questioned in connection with the trial but not
wanted to answer some follow-up questions from the media on site.
– The future will tell, he said, among other things, to Dagens industri.
The company must have actively contacted the person in question with various offers and after he gambled away SEK 282,000 in just over ten days, he was offered a so-called vip membership with offers of various bonus amounts to play for based on how much he lost.
Has been taken advantage of
During the negotiations in the Uppsala District Court, Jörgen Hettne has referred to the Contracts Act, which prohibits contracts entered into against faith and honor.
In this case, it is considered that Betsson took advantage of a person who was ill with a gambling addiction. Instead of checking how the person fared, VIP membership has been offered.
– We claim that the gambling company has known that it is a person addicted to gambling, but chooses to exploit the person as it becomes a very good source of income. We do not demand compensation before he became a vip member because then he was a player in the crowd, says Hettne, about the period before the company launched personal offers and established personal contact.