Spelinspektionen, the Swedish Gambling Inspectorate, has issued a warning to the Swedish Bingo Association for failure to comply with social responsibility requirements on its website. 

After conducting its assessment, the Inspectorate concluded that logos for self-testing, bet limitation, game suspension and determination of login time were absent from the idrottensbingo.se when customers were logged out.

However, the responsible gambling messaging was visible when players were logged in to their accounts, and the Inspectorate acknowledged that as the logos were visible to site visitors in some capacity “there was no intention from The Swedish Bingo Association page not to follow the regulations.”

Furthermore, the Inspectorate observed that the operator had made changes to the layout of its websites with regards to logos upon being informed and during the investigation. 

As a result of this, the regulator remarked that the shortcomings should “not to be regarded as serious, but neither as minor nor excusable’, whilst adding that a warning was a sufficient penalty for the transgression. 

Had the authority deemed the infraction to be more serious, it could have pursued harsher actions against the Swedish Bingo Association, such as imposing a fine or revoking its licence – the latter of which was leveraged against several 24 Curacao-based businesses in November and December. 

Online gambling has recently fallen under the spotlight once again in Sweden, as the spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant prompted the government to re-introduce temporary restrictions on the sector. 

Spelinspektionen held no objections to the decision of Minister for Health and Social Affairs Ardalan Shekarabi to reimplement the measures, which include a SEK 4,000 weekly deposit limit – initially SEK 5,000 until lowered earlier this month – as well as a SEK100 cap on bonus offers – and a mandatory limit on play time.

Although the regulator has agreed with the government’s recent decisions regarding gambling oversight, the Swedish Trade Association for Online Gambling (BOS) has maintained some criticism, having voiced opposition to the lowering of loss limits.