Spelinspektionen, the Swedish gambling watchdog, has confirmed that it has acted against a trio of operators that it has deemed to be operating without the necessary permissions in the country.
Liquid Entertainment NV, Rabocse SRL, and Solid Software Solutions operated a number of domains locally. In the case of Rabocse SRL, the domain names included gxmble.io, palmscasino.io, and seven7.casino, slottio.com, wildzy.io, winstler.co, and winzter.com
The regulator confirmed that none of these websites held a license from the watchdog and were therefore illegal for all intents and purposes under Swedish law. As to Liquid Entertainment NV, it was said to be a Curacao-based entity that operated a popular gambling site, duelbits.com.
The regulator insisted that upon checking the duelbits.com website, it found evidence that the company had used Swedish-language marketing and explanatory materials to make its offer easier to navigate. The website could also be accessed from a Swedish license.
Websites Are Not Always Happy with How Regulators Prove that Something Illegal Was Done
For the most part, offshore operators have criticized national regulators for using this as a measure of determining the legitimacy of a platform, arguing that, in certain cases, regulators would jump multiple hoops, including VPN abuse, to access a website. In a translated statement, the regulator said:
“Spelinspektionen’s inspection showed that the website duelbits.com is marketed to Swedish consumers via affiliate websites, content creators, and the video streaming platform Kick, and advertising spaces in the Google search engine.”
Nevertheless, Spelinspektionen has reiterated that the onus is on individual operators and gambling sites to ensure that their products are not available to players in the country. Sweden also holds suppliers accountable. Game developers may not have their games featured on unregulated websites that target Sweden, or they too risk losing their licenses locally.