The Swedish betting and gaming market’s growth continued in 2021 despite temporary gambling restrictions imposed by the government, according to the latest figures from Spelinspektionen.

Publishing trading results for the Swedish market for the full year and final quarter, the Swedish Gambling Inspectorate revealed that total revenue across all verticals stood at SEK 26 billion (£2.04bn) at the close of the year.

This represented a 5% year-on-year increase on 2020 figures of SEK 24.68bn (£1.94bn), whilst Q4 revenue grew by 2% on the corresponding time period in 2020 to SEK 7.01bn (2020: SEK 6.70bn).

Although sports betting remained the most dominant vertical in the country in the final quarter at SEK 3.92 billion, income from this sector actually declined from the 2020 Q4 figure of SEK 4.19bn. 

Comparatively, state owned lottery and slot games experienced an uptick of 7.2% to SEK 5.83 billion at the close of the year from SEK 5.43.7 million – in particular, bolstered by reopening of the sector.

Notably, the land-based venues of the Casino Cosmopol – which reopened in July 2021, having been closed since 29 March 2020 – reported revenue of SEK 277 million (2020: SEK 196m).

Svenska Spel’s lottery and Vegas slots lines reported a record performance for the year in the final quarter with SEK 1.68 billion (2020: SEK 1.54bn), with Casino Cosmopol revenue increasing from the third quarter’s SEK 132 million to close at SEK 144 million during this period.

Meanwhile, the overall Swedish digital ecosystem increased 6.34% to reach revenue of SEK 16.12 billion (£1.26bn) from the SEK 15.15 billion (£1.19bn) recorded one year earlier.

Lastly, Charitable lotteries’ dropped 9.4% to SEK 889 million in Q4 (2020: SEK 982m), with bingo down slightly at SEK 43m (2020: SEK 44m), and restaurant casinos closing the period up 90.6% to SEK 61m (2020: 32m).

These lotteries closed the year with revneues of SEK 3.49 billion (2020: SEK 3.55bn), bingo dropped to SEK 178 million (2020: SEK 182m), and restaurant casinos declined to SEK 122m (2020: SEK 166m).

At the end of the year there were 95 companies with active licences in Sweden, with 65 holding certification for betting/and or commercial gaming, whilst by the close of the final quarter 70,000 individuals had self-excluded via the Spelpaus.se site.