Open licensing, split by function
Alderney
A Channel Island jurisdiction whose licence separates the customer relationship from the platform operation.
Licensed online casino
Sweden
A licensed market built around a single national self-exclusion register and a one-bonus rule.
| Product | Position | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Online casino | Licensed | Commercial operators can be licensed to offer this product to local customers. |
| Sports betting | Licensed | Commercial operators can be licensed to offer this product to local customers. |
| Online poker | Licensed | Commercial operators can be licensed to offer this product to local customers. |
| Lottery | State monopoly | Reserved to a state or state-controlled operator; no commercial licence is available. |
How the market works
Sweden replaced a monopoly with licensing on 1 January 2019. The licence covers commercial online gambling and betting; state lotteries and certain land-based activity remain outside it. Channelling, meaning the share of play that goes through licensed operators, has been the central measure of success used in Swedish policy debate, and it is why the design of the rules is unusually product-focused.
Two rules define the Swedish market. A licensee may offer a customer only one bonus, at the beginning of the relationship, which removes reload offers and most retention promotions from the toolkit. And Spelpaus, the national register, excludes a customer from every licensed operator at once and blocks direct marketing to them. Both are now standard references in regulatory design elsewhere.
Sweden also requires a licensee to show the customer their net result and elapsed time during a session, and to set a deposit limit at registration for online casino, which makes the Swedish product noticeably more constrained than the same operator's offering in Britain or Malta.
Who regulates it
Spelinspektionen (SGA), based in Strängnäs and operating under Gambling Act (2018:1138). The Swedish Gambling Authority, which opened a licensed market in 2019 after decades of state monopoly.
Licence types issued
- Commercial online gambling and betting
- State lottery and slot machines
- Charitable lottery
- Land-based casino games
Questions about Sweden
Other markets in Europe
Online licence tied to a land-based licence
Belgium
Online licences exist only as supplements to land-based licences, and advertising is prohibited.
Tied to land-based online casino
Open licensing per game type
Czechia
A licensed market with a mandatory central exclusion register that covers more than self-exclusion.
Licensed online casino
Open licensing
Denmark
An early licensing regime whose certification programme and exclusion register were widely copied.
Licensed online casino
Monopoly, with licensing legislated for 2027
Finland
One of Europe's last gambling monopolies, legislated to open to licensed competition from 2027.
State monopoly online casino
Open licensing, three verticals only
France
The largest European economy with no legal online casino: only betting, horse racing and poker can be licensed.
Prohibited online casino
Background reading
Legal and compliance
What a gaming licence actually covers
A licence is not a badge of quality and it is not valid everywhere. What it authorises, who it binds, and why one company often holds a dozen.
Legal and compliance
How gambling is taxed, and why the base matters
A tax on stakes and a tax on gross gaming revenue can carry the same headline number and produce completely different businesses.
Legal and compliance
How a company enters a new market
The sequence from legal assessment to launch, and the parts that routinely take longer than anyone plans for.
Legal and compliance
What grey and black markets actually mean
The industry uses three words for the legal status of a market and rarely defines them. Here is what each one means in practice.