The Supreme Administrative Court in Sweden has told gambling operators PokerStars, Bet365 and ComeOn that they will not be given leave to appeal their penalty fees. The fees were assigned by the Swedish regulator Spelinspektionen after the operators were found to have featured betting for events that included underage players. The fines handed out were up to SEK10m (£799,108/€942,304/$941,978).
There were a total of eight different businesses in court to appeal; Bet365, PokerStars, Polar and Secure Gaming as well as four more businesses all owned by the parent company ComeOn Group. These are Casinostugan, Hajper, Snabbare and ComeOn Sweden.
All of these operators had been found to allow betting on games which included players who were underage and had been handed a variety of penalty fees as well as being issued warnings as a result.
This is a direct violation of the Swedish Gaming Act, as no bets are allowed on any events with a majority of minors participating.
Each operator submitted an appeal to the administrative court, but upon these being rejected, appeals were then made to the Supreme Administrative Court. But the court has said that they won’t hear these appeals.
This means that operators PokerStars and Bet365 will both receive penalties of SEK10m each, with Snabbare paying SEK8m. ComeOn Sweden was originally ordered to pay SEK6.5m, but this has been lowered to SEK5.5m.
The four operators under the ComeOn umbrella had previously been issued penalties back in February 2021 for SEK175m after they were found to have violated bonus regulations.
