The Swedish online gaming law is unlikely to be liberalised any time soon, according to Pontus Lindwall, chief executive officer of Betsson.
Speaking at the Third Annual Legal Gaming in Europe Summit 2009 in London on January 26, Lindwall suggested that the draft legislation announced in December last year offered little hope for change.
“I would say that it goes in the same direction as legislation has done for many years,” he commented.
Lindwall explained that the Swedish government initially worked to protect the state monopoly for tax purposes. However, after joining the EU, this stance no longer appeared financially viable for retaining the monopoly.
“So from one day to the next they changed that and said we need to keep the monopoly to protect the players,” he said, “but that was quite a huge change because up to then they had tried to maximise profits and from that day they had to protect the players but still kept on maximising profits.”
Since then there have been three different gaming law drafts, which Lindwall claimed had the “ambition” to comply with EU law. However, it is evident, he said, that the law is in conflict with EU legislation and prevents companies such as Betsson from marketing their services.
“I think this process of adapting gaming law with EU law will continue to be very slow,” he continued.
“I very often get the question ‘when will the gaming law be liberalised or re-regulated?’ and my standard answer is ‘in five years time’, which I said five and 10 years ago,” he said.
“I will stick to the same answer.”
