Sweden’s online gambling activity hasn’t increased during the pandemic, undercutting the principal argument used to justify the government’s proposed new limits on online deposits and losses.  

On Tuesday, Sweden’s Spelinspektionen regulatory body issued a report that said its online gambling licensees’ turnover in the month of March was 5.9% below March 2019’s figure and preliminary figures for the month of April show a 5.4% year-on-year decline.

Spelinspektionen cautioned that it hasn’t yet been able to determine whether the overall decline reflects sports bettors going dormant following the mass suspension of major sports due to COVID-19, or how much of their activity may have been transferred to online casino or poker products.

Spelinspektionen analyst Magnus Granlund told local media that, because of the way that online licensees report revenue, “we cannot say that [online casino activity] has increased, but we cannot exclude it either … It is very difficult to read anything.”