Swedish Online Gaming Bill Delayed

After much hope for future clarity and legislation, it appears that Sweden will not publish its online gaming bill to regulate the country’s online gambling market during this current parliamentary term. Sweden’s Culture Committee Minister Peter Norman commented that a new study would be launched in order to investigate possible online gambling legislation. The study would look at the legislation taken on board by Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway, Finland, allowing Sweden to “draw conclusions” and “form its own framework, for the best route forward”.

Furthermore Norman mentioned that the study is likely to take at least two years, and that no online gaming measures or legislation ill be introduced till its full conclusion. This signifies that online gaming operators will have to likely wait for the next parliamentary term for any gaming legislation. Norman added that the Swedish government preferred to take a cautious approach to the issue, and that its key focus was to tackle social issues caused by online gaming. Norman Further Commented “Though we have a situation we are not entirely happy with, there is so much to consider with regards to gambling issues that we need to take some time to study our neighbors’ behavior.

Nevertheless detractors and political commentators commented that the investigation is yet another false start by the current government, who simply do not want to tackle the issue of online gambling in the lead-up to next year’s general election. They also cited the lack of clarity and lack of concrete proposals on how the investigations will be carried out. Fears are that with so many stop gaps the legislation may well be passed in 2016 or 2017.

The delay to online gaming regulation has caused diverse range opinions amongst Swedish focused operators, some suggesting that a further delay is a positive since operators will likely maintain margins on gaming revenues. Others have pointed out that the Swedish igaming market has slowed down due to legislation stumbling and the current advertising restrictions put on Swedish igaming,as Sweden igaming market has grown just 1% year-on-year in its Q1 figures for 2013.