• The Administrative Court in Linköping has reversed Spelinspektionen’s March 2025 ruling against Roar Vegas, the Malta-based LeoVegas subsidiary operating locally in Sweden
• The original decision imposed an SEK8 million ($852,867) administrative fine and a formal reprimand for alleged violations of the Swedish Gambling Act’s duty-of-care provisions
• The judgment, issued on 12 June under case number 3061-25, found that the regulator’s decision lacked the clarity and unambiguous evidence required to justify sanctioning the operator
• The case turned on three high-loss accounts with monthly deposit limits between SEK100,000 and SEK300,000, drawn from a sample of 12 customers in the regulator’s first-quarter 2024 supervisory review
• The ruling lands as Sweden’s problem gambling rate has fallen from 2.2% in 2008-09 to 1.3% in 2021, and provides a notable test of how the duty of care will be enforced against licensed operators

Spelinspektionen’s Most Visible 2025 Sanction Has Now Been Set Aside

The Administrative Court in Linköping has overturned Spelinspektionen’s decision to fine Roar Vegas, the LeoVegas-owned operator licensed in Sweden, for alleged failures in its duty-of-care obligations. According to the judgment, issued on 12 June 2026 under case number 3061-25, the regulator’s decision did not meet the threshold of clarity and unambiguous evidence required to support an administrative sanction. The ruling fully reverses the SEK8 million fine and the formal reprimand imposed in March 2025.

The case began with a supervisory review covering the first quarter of 2024, in which Spelinspektionen examined Roar Vegas’ responsible-gambling procedures. According to the regulator, the review sampled 12 customer accounts selected for being the highest-loss players within two age categories, 18 to 24 and 25 and over. Three of those accounts drew particular concern. Each carried unusually high monthly deposit limits, between SEK100,000 and SEK300,000, alongside indicators that the regulator associated with excessive play, including rapid deposits and losses and long session durations. Spelinspektionen concluded that the operator had not provided sufficient assistance to these three customers, and that the eventual interventions, although effective in reducing activity, had been too late and too limited. After a proportionality assessment, it imposed the SEK8 million fine.

The operator contested the decision. According to its submissions to the court, Roar Vegas pointed to a monitoring system combining automated alerts with manual follow-ups, enforced deposit limits and account suspensions on the relevant customers, and a graduated approach moving from voluntary intervention to harder restrictions. The operator also argued that some of the indicators the regulator relied on, in particular long session durations and rapid losses after deposit, are common behaviours among sports bettors and should not be treated as automatic markers of problem gambling. It pointed to a degree of legal uncertainty prevailing before the 1 June 2024 legislative amendments clarifying how operators may process personal health and financial data for responsible-gambling assessments.

The court agreed that the regulator’s case did not meet the evidentiary standard for sanction. In its analysis, the judges noted that although the sampled accounts reflected high-risk profiles, only three customers showed the combination of rapid significant losses and high deposit limits that the case rested on. They also found that the operator’s combination of automatic notifications, mandatory deposit limits, account suspensions and manual follow-up successfully reduced gambling activity for the customers in question, and that some automated alerts were issued as early as the day after a first deposit. Acknowledging that some interventions might have been introduced sooner, the court found such delays insufficiently serious to meet the statutory threshold for a breach warranting a fine. It also accepted that the duty of care does not prescribe exact intervention timetables, and that licence holders must balance privacy, voluntary intervention and escalation, applying a reasonable-time standard appropriate to round-the-clock online gambling. Detailed records of action plans and system enhancements submitted by Roar Vegas were viewed as undermining the regulator’s assertion of a clear breach.

The Court Has Set a High Evidentiary Bar for Duty-of-Care Sanctions

The most consequential element of this judgment is what it requires the regulator to prove. Spelinspektionen’s case relied on a small, deliberately top-loss sample and an interpretation of behavioural indicators that the court found neither sufficient nor unambiguous. By insisting on clarity and unambiguous evidence before a duty-of-care fine can stand, the Administrative Court has effectively raised the threshold for future enforcement actions of this kind. That is a meaningful development for a regulatory regime that has leaned heavily on responsible-gambling sanctions to demonstrate enforcement momentum. It is not a finding that the duty of care is unenforceable, but it is a clear signal that an operator with documented monitoring, escalation and intervention can defend itself on the record.

The Methodological Question About Sampling Will Not Go Away

The ruling also raises a substantive methodological question that goes beyond this case. Selecting 12 customers from the highest-loss tail and then treating the regulator’s observations as representative of systemic failure is a stretch the court was unwilling to endorse. That is a reasonable position from an evidentiary standpoint, but it leaves an open problem for any regulator trying to discharge a supervisory function on a sector with millions of player accounts. If small, targeted samples are not enough, regulators will need to invest in more sophisticated data-driven supervision capable of distinguishing structural patterns from individual outlier accounts. Other European authorities, including those moving toward algorithmic risk detection, will be watching this judgment closely.

The Wider Compliance Picture in Sweden Still Looks Strong

Sweden’s problem-gambling rate has fallen from 2.2% in 2008-09 to 1.3% in 2021, a reduction of roughly 57,000 affected individuals and a 35% decline over the period, according to research the operator cited. That broader picture matters when assessing how to read this ruling. The decline coincides with the establishment of the licensed online market and with the kinds of responsible-gambling controls that Roar Vegas argued it was already operating. Setting aside this particular fine does not weaken the duty of care, and it does not vindicate every operator practice. It does, however, suggest that the headline question facing Spelinspektionen is now less about whether to act and more about how to build the evidentiary case when it does. The next sanction Spelinspektionen brings will be judged against the standard this court has just set.