The Swedish Gambling Authority reported that Swedish monopoly Svenska Spel’s violated the country’s new advertising restrictions. The authority, locally referred to as the Lotteriinspektionen, reviewed Svenska Spel’s marketing and advertising efforts from July to November last year and reported a handful of violations of the new marketing conditions.
In its review, the Lotteriinspektionen examined 121 marketing cases, 72 of which were considered “clear violations” with another 21 examples deemed as skirting the new regulations that were published last year. Only 28 of the studied examples were found to be clear of any infringement.
The review obviously didn’t sit well with Svenska Spel, which wasted little time hitting back at the Authority. “We have no other intention than to follow the guidelines but there are some grey areas and we feel that we have had difficulty getting specific and clear feedback from the Gaming Board on how to design the advertising,” Svenska Spel’s Spokesman Johan Tisell told Swedish publication Dagen.
Tisell also talked with eGaming Review, challenging the review’s findings and lamenting the difficulties in securing feedback from the authority. “We’ve had a dialogue with the authority for more than a year about how some of the wording of the permits should be applied, and we’ve found it quite difficult to get precise feedback,” Tisell told eGR. “Some of the units that in the report have been found not to comply with the license have actually been presented to the Authority before being used with no feedback, remarks or criticism at the time.”
Svenska Spel also took Lotteriinspektionen to task over the timing of the report, which left little time to make the necessary adjustments to their marketing and advertising initiatives.
Meanwhile, Lotteriinspektionen spokesperson Joakim Rönngren backed the report and told eGR that marketing efforts violating licensing conditions has decreased since the audit was conducted.
