Swedish Q3 figures boosted by record online gambling

Preliminary figures from Spelinspektionen showed gaming companies licensed in Sweden brought in combined revenue of SEK6.77bn ($656.6m/€616.1m/£537.8m) during the three months to 30 September 2022.

This was an increase of 7.2% compared to the SEK6.32bn generated in Q3 2021.

Online gambling revenue was SEK4.31bn during the period, which was up 10.5% year-on-year. It was also up 2.1% on Q2 2022, previously the record quarter since Sweden opened its licensed gaming market in January 2019.

State-owned lottery and slot hall revenue of SEK1.40bn, all from Svenska Spel operations, was up by 1.2% on Q3 2021 but down slightly compared to Q2 2022.

Land-based commercial gaming generated revenue of SEK5.9m during the quarter, which was up by 23.0% compared to the same period last year.

Spelinspektionen added that at the end of the quarter, just under 81,300 people were excluded from gambling via Spelpaus.se. This was an increase of 5% compared to the previous quarter.

Sweden unlicensed gambling survey

Earlier this week, Spelinspektionen revealed that a survey it commissioned found that Swedish players’ awareness of how to identify licensed sites is still extremely low, with only 10% of gamblers saying that they know how to do so.

The survey found that 53% of past-year gamblers believe that there are advantages to playing with licensed sites, and only 2% said they had deliberately and knowingly played with an unlicensed site in 2021. Meanwhile, 31% listed an operator being licensed as among the most important reasons to choose an operator.

However, just 10% of gamblers said that they knew how to identify whether an operator is licensed. This was steady year-on-year, suggesting that there had been no progress in educating the public about the differences between the licensed and unlicensed sectors.

Overall, 72% of adults in Sweden had gambled during 2021. This was down slightly year-on-year.