The gambling landscape in Sweden is all set to be significantly reshaped and restructured. The country's regulatory body, Lotteriinspektionen, has announced that the new gambling bill, as approved by the Swedish government on June 7th, will come into effect on January 1st 2019. A part of the new gambling bill will be the rearranged licensing process.
From July 10th, new application documents for this licensing process will be made available. With many operators already having expressed their interest in applying for a Swedish license, and the new applications can be filed in from August 1st, when the licensing process will be officially opened.
The new Act introduces some changes to international cooperation, responsible gambling and fees handling. Parliament (Riksdag) has voted 282-19 for the landslide adoption of the bill. The new Act has got a number SFS 2018:1138 in the Swedish Code of Statutes.
At the moment, the current timetable and schedule for these new practices coming into play are as follows: on July 5th, the Government will approve a new gambling regulation which will regulate the Gambling Act in more detail and depth. On July 10th, the Swedish Gambling Authority's website will publish the new application documents. After July 24th, the Swedish Gambling Authority's regulations and guidelines, which will be preliminary in force on September 1st before full regulation on January 1st, will be pre-published on their website.
Sweden has reported a total revenue of 5.6 billion SEK in the first quarter of 2018, a 2.8% increase compared to last year, with national lotteries making a small jump in revenue while operators without Swedish permits reported a big growth of 15.3%. Online gambling in the country has increased by 16%.
Source:
“Application documents will be available from 10 July”, lotteriinspektionen.se, June 20, 2018.