The Swedish gambling industry has been hit by a decline in gambling revenue relating to the first nine months of 2018, but unregulated operators have enjoyed an increase in income.
According to figures released by the Swedish gambling regulator, the Lotteriinspektionen total gambling market revenue in Sweden was up by 1.2 percent to a figure of SEK16.8 billion (€1.6 billion) in the nine months to the end of September 2018, but regulated market income fell by 2.4 percent.
That fall was offset by a 12.4 percent rise in revenue from offshore, unregulated operators, which now account for over a quarter of the betting market in Sweden.
Land-based declines
The decline in regulated market revenue has been put down to the decline in year on year revenue for many of the leading licensed betting companies in Sweden, and although there was growth in the online market, this was offset by an 8.4 percent decline in land-based gambling revenue.
Sweden’s biggest betting company, Svenska Spel, which has a 38 percent share of the market, recorded a 1.6 percent drop, though the company’s online section showed a 22.4 percent increase.
Horse racing betting company AB Trav och Galopp also saw a similar pattern of online growth undercut by land-based decline, and the company as a whole saw its revenue drop by 0.4 percent.
Many of Sweden’s smaller licensed lottery operators, such as the Postcode Lottery and Folkspel have also recorded year-on-year declines in 2018, and there was a particularly significant decline for IOGT-NTO, the lottery that is run by the Swedish temperance movement, which saw a huge loss of 24.8 percent in year-on-year revenue.
Man with hands on head looking at falling revenue on graph image taken from shutterstock.com
