On 22 September 2025, the Swedish Gambling Authority (Sw. Spelinspektionen) ("SGA") completed investigations into four gambling software providers' regulatory compliance with the Swedish Gambling Act (2018:1138). The SGA issued formal warnings and penalty fees totalling SEK 715,000 to three providers for making their games available on unlicensed websites through third-party content partners. A fourth provider, Playson, was cleared of any wrongdoing.

These investigations follow on a precedent-setting enforcement decision from January 2024 in which the SGA issued a formal warning and imposed a fine of SEK 2.6 million against the gambling software provider Hacksaw Studios AB for similar infringements. Hacksaw Studios AB appealed the SGA’s decision to the Administrative Court, which upheld the decision in principle but reduced the fine to SEK 20,000, ruling that the original amount was disproportionate given Hacksaw's limited Swedish turnover. Hacksaw Studios AB subsequently appealed the Administrative Court's judgement to the Administrative Court of Appeal (Sw. Kammarrätten), and the case is now awaiting a decision on leave to appeal.

The recent wave of enforcement activity reflects both the significantly intensified focus on the regulated B2B gambling sector over the past year (discussed here) and SGA’s commitment to enhanced supervision following criticism from the Swedish National Audit Office (Sw. Riksrevisionen) regarding insufficient supervision of the gambling market.

Legal Framework

Since July 2023, the Swedish Gambling Act requires anyone who manufactures, maintains, installs or modifies gambling software used in the provision of online games to hold a permit. Crucially, permit holders may only provide such services to operators who access the Swedish market without themselves holding the necessary SGA gambling licence under the Swedish Gambling Act.

In cases of serious infringements of these requirements, the SGA may revoke the provider’s permit or, if deemed sufficient, issue a formal warning accompanied by an administrative fine of up to 10 per cent of the provider’s turnover in Sweden for the preceding financial year.

Key Issues and Inspection Outcomes

The Hacksaw Studios case and the four recent SGA enforcement decisions differ in their facts and outcomes but all concern the same fundamental questions: the scope of the software provider’s liability when its games are made available on an unlicensed or banned website through a third-party distributor, and the significance of mitigating techniques such as geo-blocking in determining whether services are being provided to the Swedish market. Across these cases, the SGA established and confirmed several clear principles:

1. Ultimate responsibility. Gambling software providers bear the ultimate responsibility for ensuring their software is not supplied to unlicenced or banned operators, regardless of whether distribution occurs through third-party partners or intermediaries. The fact that contracts with unlicensed gambling operators are concluded by third parties and that such third parties may be breaching contracts with the gambling software providers in doing so does not shift this liability. 

    

2. Geo-blocking is insufficient. The use of geo-blocking techniques to prevent Swedish players from participating in the games does not preclude an infringement of the prohibition, as collaboration with unlicensed gambling operators are prohibited per se. 

    

3. Serious infringements. Providing software services to unlicensed operators is generally considered a serious infringement, irrespective of mitigating factors, such as prompt rectification, implementation of measures to prevent future infringements or geo-blocking activities.

4. Choice of sanction. When deciding whether to revoke a permit or issue a formal warning, the SGA will generally consider a warning sufficient if the gambling software provider has taken corrective action and there is reason to assume that future compliance with the Swedish Gambling Act will be maintained.

5. Calculation of administrative fines. The amount of the administrative fine will reflect the same considerations applied when determining whether a formal warning is sufficient. In the two most recent cases where fines were calculated based on the gaming software providers’ annual turnover, they amounted to approximately half of the maximum permissible fine.

    

6. Unauthorised copies. Gambling software providers are not liable for games provided by third-party suppliers that use game titles or references resembling, or derived from, the provider's older trademark elements. Such cases fall outside the scope of the SGA's assessment.

    

Further developments in Swedish gambling regulation 

It will be interesting to see whether leave to appeal is granted in the Hacksaw Studios case and, if so, whether the Administrative Court of Appeal reaches a different conclusion. We will continue to follow developments in this area.

Moreover, from 1 January 2026, new prohibitions on credit payments will apply under the Swedish Gambling Act. Additionally, further legislative proposals seek to expand the scope of application of the Gambling Act. For a detailed analysis of these developments, see the article written by Mårten Lindberg and Eleonora Pavliouk available here.