Norwegian rules had protected Swedish gambling addicts • 200 seconds about Swedish gambling

Ten gambling addicts lost over SEK 250,000 each in two months of gambling at Svenska Spel.

If Norwegian rules applied, it would not have happened. There, the maximum loss is SEK 20,000 a month.

– Svenska Spel does not use the model that Norsk Tipping uses, answers the company’s press service.

In March, the Spelinspektionen gave Svenska Spel’s subsidiary Svenska Spel Sport & Casino a warning and ordered the company to pay a sanction fee of SEK 100 million.

The reason was that the company did not fulfill the duty of care.

Ten audited major players were allowed to lose between SEK 267,000 and 574,000 over two months in the fall of 2021. An example from the decision:

• Customer 4 played around the clock. Lost 324,953 kroner.

During the year under review – 2021 – Svenska Spel, including the subsidiary Svenska Spel Sport & Casino, made a profit of SEK 2.5 billion. In total, over the past decade, the company has collected SEK 35.7 billion.

“Acting at losses”

In Norway, where state-owned Norsk Tipping has a monopoly on online gambling, the monopoly company explicitly states that “consideration for vulnerable players is most important”. Therefore, Norsk Tipping has introduced a loss limit of NOK 20,000 (around SEK 21,000) per month. More than that, a Norwegian player can never lose every month.

In other words: if the Norwegian rules had applied in 2021 for customer 4, the loss in two months would have been limited to around SEK 42,000. Instead, it was allowed to be SEK 324,953.

Fredrik Wastenson, CEO of Svenska Spel Sport & Casino, states in an email to 200 seconds:

– Although we do not have a general loss limit in the same way as Norsk Tipping or (Åland) Paf, we act in the event of losses and can then suspend customers from gambling, he writes.

The controls don’t always work

Svenska Spel has other gambling limits, which look like this: Customers who play for more than SEK 2,000 per month aged 18–19, more than SEK 10,000 per month for 20–24-year-olds or more than SEK 20,000 per month for those who are over 24 years of age are contacted for a care interview. If the customer does not answer or refuses to talk about their gambling habits, they are banned from gambling.

There are also limits on the amount of money that can be deposited into customers’ gaming accounts without control. Anyone who is over 24 and wishes to have a deposit limit of more than SEK 10,000 per month must report their financial assets. For even younger players, checks are carried out for deposits of over SEK 5,000 or over SEK 1,000 per month.

Fredrik Wastenson writes:

– Our control of financial ability means a maximum limit based on the individual’s wallet. With Norsk Tipping with a fixed loss limit, a customer can therefore lose NOK 20,000 a month, or with Paf (on Åland) SEK 190,000 per year, even if the customer has no income, which is not possible with us, says Wastenson.

200 seconds of review shows, on the contrary, that it is possible. Svenska Spel tightened its gambling limits in January 2022, and then introduced income controls. But the controls don’t always work.

“Could keep playing”

When the gambling addict Daniel was forced to report his income in September 2022 in order to continue gambling, he sent in three falsified salary specifications and an account statement from Avanza, where he had borrowed 100,000 kroner.

– Then I could continue playing, says Daniel.

Read more about him here.

Footnote: Daniel is actually called something else. Paf – or Åland’s Slot Machine Association – is the name of Åland’s state gambling monopoly.

FACTS Here you can get help

Read more