Though the industry shows signs of fatigue, Gustaf Hoffstedt, Secretary-General of BOS, tells SBC that the toughest battle of the decade’s close will be reframing how gambling policy is understood and discussed.

“It can come down to changing one opinion at a time,” says Gustaf Hoffstedt, Secretary-General of BOS, Sweden’s Online-Gambling Trade Association.

Few in European gambling circles have spent as long attempting to hold the line between politics, regulation and business as Hoffstedt, and few speak as candidly about how fragile that balance has become.

At the midpoint of  a “relentless decade” of reforms and sudden changes, his message is unfashionably simple: “Without coherent dialogue between policymakers, operators and the public, Europe’s gambling markets risk becoming fragmented governed less by evidence than by moral instinct.”

In an era when gambling is once again cast as a social pathology, Hoffstedt’s defence is not of deregulation but of rational regulation: the belief that a functioning market with clear rules offers better protection than moralistic ambiguity.

The vibes, as he puts it, have certainly changed. The early 2020s opened with optimism. The industry was expanding across the Atlantic, courting investors, and bedding in long-awaited regulatory frameworks in Europe. Governments had spoken of balancing consumer safeguards with economic realism.

Yet six years later, in Europe gambling appears to be losing its political equilibrium. Across Western markets, the post-liberal turn in gambling policy has hardened into suspicion. Regulators have grown bolder, ministers warier, and public sentiment colder.

Sweden is Patient Zero

Sweden, ironically, was meant to be the model. Its 2019 re-regulation marked the end of a monopoly and the start of an open licensing system. Parliament agreed—near unanimously—that channelisation (the percentage of gambling revenues wagered on licensed operators) was the single measure that mattered.  The goal was 90%. It worked, for a while. Then came the temptations of government: deposit caps, bonus restrictions, pandemic-era limits on play.

“The political instinct,” Hoffstedt says, “was to regulate the license-holders rather than the unlicensed.” That, he argues, “was patient zero in Europe’s wider breakdown of trust between regulator and regulated”.

As Swedish players drifted offshore, other capitals watched and drew the wrong lesson. The problem was not the liberal model but its abandonment.

Contagion spreads

From Berlin to The Hague, policymakers followed similar patterns: introduce a licensing regime, trumpet its virtues, then smother it with bans and limits to signal virtue. 

Germany’s federal experiment has yielded a channelisation rate of barely 30%. The Netherlands, once hailed for pragmatism, has dipped below 50%. Italy and Latvia enforce near-total marketing prohibitions.

Hoffstedt calls this “the politics of de-normalisation”—a movement that regards gambling as something to be erased rather than managed. It is, he suggests, a curious kind of puritanism for an age that otherwise prizes personal choice.

Evidence fixes fractures

BOS, he insists, is not a lobby for looser rules but for better ones. “We had a strong dialogue before re-regulation,” he recalls. “Everyone agreed on the same values. We need to find that again.” The association now seeks to restore Sweden’s original 90% channelisation target and re-establish a shared vocabulary between policymakers and operators.

It is a modest ambition in an overheated debate, but perhaps the only realistic one. “It comes down to changing one opinion at a time,” Hoffstedt repeats.

BOS is working to rebuild that lost dialogue, armed not with rhetoric but with data. The association has taken a more assertive, almost technocratic stance—publishing its own independent studies and market comparatives to expose the cost of regulatory drift. 

Its latest report, released in October, drew direct comparisons with Denmark’s mature licensing model, noting how Sweden’s over-regulation and punitive restrictions have depressed channelisation while Denmark continues to achieve rates well above 90%.

This evidence-first approach marks a shift in strategy. Rather than lobbying reactively against every proposed measure, BOS has moved onto the front foot, positioning itself as an indispensable source of regulatory insight. 

The trade body’s studies map consumer migration, advertising trends and deposit behaviour, providing the kind of granular detail that government ministries rarely have the capacity to compile.

“We want regulators to confront that evidence,” Hoffstedt says. “To understand that if a policy drives players away from the legal market, it fails both the state and the consumer.”

Restoring Sweden’s original 90% channelisation target remains the association’s rallying point—but Hoffstedt sees it as “a starting line, not the finish.”

 

Liberalism in lean times

In an era of moral panic and populist regulation, Hoffstedt’s optimism feels almost subversive. Yet his argument is grounded in evidence and democratic realism. Liberal regulation, he insists, “still works provided it keeps the consumer, not ideology, at its core”.

“Europe can still attach liberal principles to gambling,” he concludes. “Sweden proved it once. We just need to prove it again.”

The sector’s survival depends less on lobbying than on tone: on “reading the room, reading the vibes”, understanding when to engage and when to listen. The industry, he insists, must be humble enough to acknowledge harm, but confident enough to defend its place in society.

As Europe’s policymakers tilt toward moral caution, Hoffstedt remains committed to persuasion over protest. “If we can remind people that gambling is part of everyday life—and that regulation should make it safer, not shameful—then liberalism still has a future in this industry.”