In Sweden and the Ministry of Finance has released a proposal that could see the nation’s Spelinspektionen gaming regulator double the price for the annual renewal of an online casino or sportsbetting operator license to approximately $60,400.

The government department used an official Monday press release to disclose that this proposition is just one of many contained within a planned update to the country’s Gaming Ordinance of 2018 with interested parties now being given until May 9 to make their opinions known via an ongoing public consultation.

Provider provision:

Sweden legalized a wide range of iGaming activities from January of 2019 while the Ministry of Finance declared that the proposed duty rise forms part of its effort to create a landscape with ‘strengthened gaming regulation’. Scandinavia’s most populous nation is also looking to bring in an inaugural license for those developers who supply online gaming software and games with its annual rate to be pegged at about $12,000.

Appropriate agent:

Regarding this final proposal and the government department confirmed that it will be looking to require such enterprises located outside of the European Economic Area, which encompasses the European Union alongside the nations of Norway, Iceland and Croatia, to maintain a ‘physical representative’ within Sweden.

Further fixes:

The Ministry of Finance disclosed that these alterations could come into force from as soon as March of next year and may moreover encompass a provision that would allow the Spelinspektionen watchdog to charge licensed operators up to $3,000 for any changes to their certifications. However, the authority stated that this fee would not apply to any firm seeking to revise its postal address although software providers could be obliged to hand over in the region of $80 every time they nominated a new ‘physical representative’.

Data directive:

As part of this new regime and the Ministry of Finance pronounced that it would furthermore like the Spelinspektionen to be able to charge operators with an unspecified fee ‘for the supervision exercised by the authority’. It went on to assert that it wants this to be joined by a requirement that licensees be obliged to supply the watchdog with information on their activities so that it may improve its ‘supervisory activities’.

Read a statement from the Ministry of Finance…

“Some other amendments to the Gaming Ordinance are also proposed as a result of the new requirement for a license for gaming software. It is proposed that a requirement be introduced for those who have a permit for gaming software to save data for as long as is necessary for the Spelinspektionen to be able to exercise its supervision.”