Sweden’s online gambling operators are pushing back against a government report that advocates for a raft of new restrictions on their locally licensed sites.

On Monday, Sweden’s Ministry of Finance issued a voluminous Gambling Market Inquiry report (English summary starts on page 27), which was commissioned in 2018, ahead of the 2019 launch of the country’s regulated online gambling market. Special investigator Anna-Lena Sörenson, a former Swedish MP, was tasked with overseeing the inquiry.  

Sörenson said the report was a “complex assignment” requiring “difficult trade-offs” between protecting consumers and ensuring “appropriate” regulation of online gambling. But the lobby group representing Sweden’s online licensees has already criticized the report as focusing too much on tying the hands of local operators while doing far less to deter internationally licensed sites. 

The report does recommend a B2B licensing system that would prohibit gambling software firms from offering their products via locally licensed sites if they also allow such products to appear on international sites targeting Swedish customers without local permission.