Sweden Releases More Information About New Online Gambling Regulation
Sweden has been very cautious in opening up its online gambling industry and currently only Svenska Spel, the state run gaming operator is authorized to offer licensed online gambling services in the country. Sweden has taken steps in the recent past to come up with robust online gambling regulations that is expected to be rolled out shortly.
The new regulations are expected to boost the country’s online gambling market and also crackdown on unlicensed operators in the country. Recently, Mark Knighton, who is the founder and CEO of Gothenburg-based Obsidian Consultancy, discussed some details of the planned regulatory changes on his LinkedIn page.
The biggest change to Sweden’s online gambling industry would be that Svenska Spel would no longer have exclusive rights to the online gambling industry. Sweden plans to offer online gambling licenses to international operators as long as they meet the terms and conditions laid out in the new regulations. The new regulations will also focus on a crackdown of Sweden’s illegal online gambling market which makes up more than twenty five percent of online gambling activities in the country.
When it comes to the online gambling licensing process, all operators looking to enter Sweden will have to ensure they have their servers located in Sweden. The Swedish gaming regulator, Lotteriinspektionen, will have control over the type of games to be licensed and will determine the parameters of those games.
The new gaming regulation will also address the issue of taxation. A review of the Swedish gambling industry was done and it was recommended that new operators be allowed into the market and taxed at 18% on their full year of gambling revenue. This recommendation is understood to be have been approved in the legislation. Considering that Sweden’s gambling market is worth SEK16.557 billion, the online gambling industry will generate a significant amount for the government via taxes.
Finally, there will be a number of policies put in place to ensure that Swedish online gamblers do not suffer from predation by online gambling operators. The new regulations have a number of clauses in them such as limiting operators to offering only a one-off bonus to new players when they register and setting a cap on the deposit limits. These restrictions are expected to address the issues of problem gambling and stop players from going overboard with their gambling. Additional restrictions like warnings and blocking of transactions are also expected to be rolled out.
All of these legislative changes are set to take effect on January 1, 2019. Currently, these regulations are being reviewed by the European Union and are at a standstill until March 2018. However, Sweden will start accepting licensing applications from mid-2018.
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