Exclusive: Evolution to remove games from unlicensed Swedish operators

Evolution Gaming has pledged to sever ties with unlicensed Swedish operators offering its games, EGR can reveal.

A Swedish report this week found the company’s games were available on 16 unlicensed operator sites accessible by Swedish players out of a sample of 17.

Games from rival NetEnt were available on one of the 17 sites.

When asked about its links with unlicensed companies, Evolution said it was in the process of removing its games from the operators in question.

An Evolution spokesperson told EGR: “We are investigating the sites I believe you are referring to and we are in the process of removing our games from these sites.

“Our contracts clearly state that in order to offer our games, operators must hold relevant licences or similar authorisation in jurisdictions where it is required.

“Sweden has a licensing system and hence we require our operators to hold an SGA licence in order to offer our games.”

NetEnt Malta MD Henrik Fagerlund said: “We have looked into this case and this operator is no longer carrying our games in Sweden. I can’t go into further detail about this specific case but on a general note we take these kinds of things very seriously.

“Our operators are contractually bound not to offer our games if they do not have the proper licensing, or if it is or could be illegal to offer our games in that territory.

“As a first step we issue a warning when something like this happens, and that warning also reminds operators that we have the right to end the agreement if they continue to disregard the warning,” he added.

The issue of channelisation in the Swedish market has come to the fore in recent weeks with the Swedish regulator writing to payment processors in the country asking them to stop facilitating transactions to unlicensed firms.

The Swedish Gambling Authority said yesterday it had seen channelisation rates of 91% in the first six months of the reregulated market, in line with its own targets.

Anecdotal reports have suggested it is a bigger problem, given the dip in market-wide revenues compared to 2018.

“Is the market really down 10-20%?” DNB Markets analyst Martin Arnell said to EGR earlier this year.

“Is that really something that we’ve seen in regulated markets in this industry? I’ve heard a lot of senior executives questioning these numbers, and implicitly suggesting there is a black market here that we don’t see in the regulator’s numbers.”

LeoVegas CEO Gustaf Hagman suggested the 91% figure included products like pool betting from ATG and Svenska Spel which were impossible for unlicensed firms to replicate.

“You can imagine then that within the casino sector and the sports sector, channelisation is just 75-80%.”