Facts: The gambling scandal
In February 1990, the newspaper Expressen reveals a series of mysterious circumstances surrounding games with high stakes in various places in the country at elite matches in ice hockey and bandy involving Boden and Västra Frölunda and Boltic respectively. Among other things, a young girl enters a tobacco shop in Falun and gambles for 345,000 kroner with the former Tipstjänst.
Expressen states that players in the teams have been bribed by a gambling mafia. But many in Sports Sweden are upset and the players are blue.
Instead, the Chancellor of Justice prosecutes Expressen’s editor-in-chief Bo Strömstedt for slandering the players, but he is acquitted in a high-profile trial. Many years later, a Boltic player appears anonymously in the Nya Wermlands-Tidningen and admits that it was a gambling scandal.
That Swedish sportsmen would allow themselves to be bribed and deliberately lose in order to earn big money gambling was something unheard of in folk-home Sweden in the early 90s.
The newspaper Expressen’s information in February 1990 hit like a bomb.
The drama series “Spelskandalen”, which premieres on SVT on Monday, is based on the story that shook Sports Sweden.
Guys from the country
Björn Elgerd and Edvin Bredefeldt portray the game-crazy guys Bosse and Josh from Norrbotten who come to Stockholm in the early 1990s and are drawn into the semi-criminal world of gambling.
— They are nice guys from the country, but they are not beginners in the game and what is nice about the roles is that they make use of the fact that they are seen as beginners from the country. But they are really cruel, says Björn Elgerd and smiles.
Edvin Bredefeldt, Sara Shirpey and Björn Elgerd play the main roles in “Spelskandalen” in SVT.
It’s a story about shy individuals and big money rolling in. Several bandy and ice hockey clubs were singled out as being involved in the gambling scandal, and games with very high stakes on matches with the clubs came to Tipstjänst.
But director Patrik Eklund and screenwriter Dennis Magnusson make no claim to tell the truth. The series is the big player Bosse’s story and not a documentary.
— We are super clear about that in the series. That has always been the point. Now it’s this young guy’s story we’re going to tell and now he gets to talk to the point, says Dennis Magnusson.
He thinks that “Spelskandalen” has something to say about Sweden even three decades after the events that take place in the series.
— The naivety that exists in how we like to paint a picture in Sweden that we don’t have corruption, but that’s not the case, but there is corruption in Sweden just like in Italy.
Not cousins from the country
The real boss’s name is Bosse Lundkvist and is nowadays a sports and games journalist in Piteå. He thinks it’s fun to be portrayed in the series.
— I think everyone has done a good job. Then whether it will be Donald Duck or a huge fiasco, you never know, says Bosse Lundkvist to TT.
He also emphasizes that he didn’t have much to do with the series.
— It’s a bit special, but I haven’t lost sleep over it because it’s based on a script. There are many things that could have been pushed to the extreme, but which perhaps SVT does not want to go into due to the risk of libel.
In the series, Bosse and Josh, whose real name is something else, are portrayed as innocent boys from the country. But it wasn’t like that, says Bosse Lundkvist. They had many contacts in the gaming world.
— It is the director and screenwriter who want to make us cousins from the country. But they are welcome to do that, he says and laughs.
The newspaper Expressen was charged with defamation, but was acquitted by the freedom of the press jury, and all the twists and turns surrounding the gambling scandal were never properly sorted out. So what really happened, what was the truth about the gambling scandal?
— There are very few, very few, who know the absolute truth about what has happened. But it will come out one way or another, says Bosse Lundkvist.