Sweden’s Spelinspektionen fined bet365’s Hillside entities SEK 44m for deposit-limit and duty-of-care breaches but stopped short of licence revocation.
Sweden’s gambling regulator Spelinspektionen has imposed penalty fees totalling SEK 44m on the two entities behind bet365 in Sweden, Hillside (Sports) ENC and Hillside (Gaming) ENC, for breaching the country’s duty of care and deposit-limit rules. The sports arm was fined SEK 40m and the gaming arm SEK 4m, and both companies keep their licences. Spelinspektionen set out the judgments in a notice on rulings concerning Hillside ENC.
Between January 1, 2019 and April 19, 2022, both sides of bet365’s Swedish business allowed players to select a “no limit” option when setting deposit limits . The platform carried a hidden technical ceiling of SEK 500m, but Spelinspektionen ruled that the statutory obligation to set an actual numeric limit had not been met.
Why the licence survived
Spelinspektionen judged the failures serious and systematic, serious enough that a licence review including revocation was on the table. The regulator limited the measure to a warning and financial penalties because the companies implemented corrective actions during and after the audit.
The penalties were also reduced from an original calculation of SEK 65m for the sports arm and SEK 14m for the gaming arm. Cooperation with the regulator played a part, as did Swedish rules capping sanction fees at 10% of an operator’s annual turnover.
Ongoing obligations
The decision leaves bet365’s Swedish entities with standing requirements. Players losing more than SEK 10,000 in a month will trigger a manual review, with earlier checks for vulnerable groups, young adults aged 18 to 24, and players returning after self-exclusion.
bet365 is the fourth-largest operator in Sweden according to the Blask Index, and the case adds to a run of Spelinspektionen enforcement that has also caught Betsson, ComeOn Group’s Snabbare, Mr Green, ATG and Kanon Gaming over the past year. The company declined to comment.
Petra Vanhoof has spent the better part of a decade following the shifting tides of gambling regulation across Europe and beyond. She came up through the compliance side of the industry before pivoting to writing, which gives her a grounded, no-nonsense perspective on the rules, loopholes, and political maneuvering that shape how operators actually do business. She is particularly drawn to the gap between what regulators say and what the market ends up doing in response.