Swedish Appeals Court Upholds Bet365 Duty-of-Care Penalties

Spelinspektionen, Sweden’s gambling regulator, announced on 14 ottobre 2026 that the Court of Appeal in Jönköping had rejected appeals by the two sister companies behind bet365 in Sweden, upholding warnings and penalty fees of SEK 40 million for Hillside (Sports) ENC and SEK 4 million for Hillside (Gaming) ENC for serious breaches of the country’s duty-of-care and mandatory deposit-limit rules.

In a judgment against Hillside (Sports) ENC and a parallel judgment against Hillside (Gaming) ENC, both delivered in Jönköping on 8 ottobre 2026, the Court of Appeal rejected the appeals and confirmed the lower court’s confidentiality rulings. The court agreed with the Administrative Court in Linköping that both companies had committed serious breaches of the duty of care and the deposit-limit rules, and that a warning combined with a penalty fee of SEK 40 million for Hillside (Sports) ENC and SEK 4 million for Hillside (Gaming) ENC was a proportionate intervention in relation to those breaches.

The Appeals Process

Spelinspektionen’s board issued the original decisions on 24 aprile 2023: a warning and a SEK 65 million penalty fee against Hillside (Sports) ENC, and a warning and a SEK 14 million penalty fee against Hillside (Gaming) ENC, for deficiencies in the companies’ duty-of-care work.

Both companies appealed to the Administrative Court in Linköping. In judgments on 13 giugno 2024, that court changed the decisions only by lowering the fees to SEK 40 million and SEK 4 million, amounts it found proportionate and fair given the breaches, the companies’ financial circumstances and circumstances in both mitigating and aggravating directions, according to the regulator’s decision-list entries for the sports case and the gaming case. In those proceedings Spelinspektionen had itself advocated reductions to SEK 52 million and SEK 5 million, citing a 2023 guiding ruling from the Supreme Administrative Court on how penalty fees must be calculated against net turnover.

The companies appealed again, and on 8 ottobre 2026 the Court of Appeal made the same assessment as the Administrative Court and rejected both appeals.

The 2021 Supervision and the ‘No Limit’ Option

Spelinspektionen opened supervision of both Hillside companies on 21 dicembre 2021 to examine how they complied with the duty of care and with the requirement that online players set an upper deposit limit per day, week and month. The regulator requested the records of the ten customers who had lost the most money between October 17 and 17 dicembre 2021, and proceeded in depth with five of them.

The review established that from 1 gennaio 2019 until 18 aprile 2022 the companies had let customers choose a “no limit” alternative when setting deposit limits, with a technical ceiling of SEK 500 million in the system that the customer could not see. Six of the ten heaviest-losing sports-betting customers lacked a limit on one or more of the daily, weekly or monthly levels, four of them entirely, while four of the ten gaming customers lacked limits on all three levels for all or part of the period. On 19 aprile 2022, following the regulator’s observations, the companies changed the set-up so that all customers must choose a fixed deposit value for each of the three periods, and brought forward a planned change to present an empty free-text field instead of a preset value. The 2023 decisions described the earlier interpretation of the deposit-limit rule as not only incorrect but remarkable and careless in relation to a gambling company’s basic obligations to follow the rules and protect its customers.

Hillside (Sports) ENC was licensed on 27 novembre 2018 to offer betting from 1 gennaio 2019, and Hillside (Gaming) ENC to offer commercial online gaming, with both licences valid through 31 dicembre 2023. The sister companies share the bet365.com website and a single player account, and their ERDS monitoring system is programmed to include data from both betting and commercial online gaming.

Duty of Care, Arguments and the Penalty Framework

The Court of Appeal held that the duty of care obliges a licensee to take necessary measures at the same pace as the gambling occurs, so that if a player shows extensive risk behaviour and a first message has no effect, the licensee must swiftly escalate its measures. The court found that the reviewed customers had shown excessive gambling and that Hillside took initial contact measures in relation to most of them, but that all of the customers were then able to keep playing without more extensive action. In the sports case, manual reviews and access restrictions were delayed a relatively long time where they were taken at all; in the gaming case, more extensive measures were not taken at all.

Hillside told the court that a five-customer assessment basis amounted to a fraction of a per mille of its customer base and that its overall responsible-gambling work was effective. The company said 60 per cent of the reviewed customers were ultimately excluded by the company and a further 20 per cent self-excluded, and that it had adapted its work during the supervision, changing its action plan for closer follow-up of customers losing more than SEK 10,000 a month and introducing lowered thresholds for young players and players returning after self-exclusion. It described the fees as disproportionate, noting that they corresponded to 56 per cent of the available sanction headroom in the sports case and 59 per cent in the gaming case, and argued that the failure to require specified deposit limits had no actual consequences for customers.

Spelinspektionen countered that the long-running deficiencies in the mandatory deposit limits breached systemically important rules and were alone sufficient for a warning, and that the risk assessments made during the review period in several cases did not match the high risk associated with the customers.

Under the Gambling Act, a penalty fee must be at least SEK 5,000 and at most 10 per cent of the licensee’s turnover in the preceding financial year, and the Supreme Administrative Court has found that turnover in this context means the licensee’s net turnover from the licensed activity. The Court of Appeal stated that the maximum available fee was SEK 72 million for Hillside (Sports) ENC and SEK 6.9 million for Hillside (Gaming) ENC. Giving particular weight to the deposit-limit breach being serious and long-running, the court found the SEK 40 million and SEK 4 million fees proportionate and fair in relation to the breaches and the companies’ financial circumstances.

The Gambling Act provides that serious breaches should lead to licence revocation unless a warning is sufficient. In the 2023 decisions, Spelinspektionen weighed that the companies had removed the “no limit” option, moved up the introduction of the free-text deposit field, amended the action plan for closer follow-up of customers losing more than SEK 10,000 a month and lowered ERDS thresholds for players aged 18 to 24 and for players returning from self-exclusion, and concluded that a warning was a sufficient intervention.

The original decisions recorded that Hillside (Sports) ENC reported 2021 gross turnover of SEK 8,845,644,242 and gross gaming revenue of SEK 724,572,794, while Hillside (Gaming) ENC reported gross turnover of SEK 1,970,803,191 and gross gaming revenue of SEK 69,042,354, figures the regulator collected to keep the penalty fees proportionate.