Various activities hitting the gambling industry in the last couple of months are having effects on the gambling community, especially the young ones. Currently, the most popular Swedish tool allowing users to self-exclude themselves from play, Spelpaus.se, is living proof of this.
Young Adults Reducing Addiction:
As we mentioned above, this tool allows gamblers to disengage themselves from gambling, at least for a certain period of time. According to the latest reports, almost half of those who have signed up to it are young individuals between the ages of twenty-five to thirty-four.
More than 35,000 Swedes have been added to the register and the watchdog said that approximately forty percent of those who have opted in belong precisely to the young adult age category.
Furthermore, in May this year, over 2,800 individuals have signed up to this plan which was unveiled on January 1 to coincide with the release of the country’s regulated online gambling market.
What Does Spelpaus Stand For?
This scheme gives Swedish citizens the opportunity to exclude themselves from any form of gambling activity in this country and to refuse to participate in anything that is in correlation with marketing campaigns.
Users must first register to this site by providing their BankID number. Upon doing so, they are banned from reaching iGaming sites and casinos are obliged to delete their information from every single marketing database.
Spelpaus.se is efficient across licensed online casino, lotteries, land-based services (bingo halls and retail stores), as well as slot games. Those who register can exclude themselves for one, three or six months or until further notice. Spelinspektionen reported that most individuals who decide to take this step return after at least one year.
Cooperation Between Casinos & Spelpaus.se:
There are several rules that must be obeyed when it comes to this subject and one of those is that gambling operators must merge with Spelpaus.se as part of their license requirements and that those who refuse to integrate could potentially be punished with serious fines and could also face having their licenses revoked.
Moreover, a couple of licensees have already experienced the wrath of one of the most important institutions in Sweden, precisely because they weren’t respecting these rules. Paf Consulting as well as another prosperous developer, Genesis Gaming were punished in March.
What did they do? They allowed users to gamble on their websites even after opting in for self-exclusion. Genesis was fined with SEK4m (around $429,000) while Paf Consulting, a subsidiary of the Aland Islands-based operator was fined with SEK100,000.
Source: “Young Adults Dominate Spelpaus Sign-Ups” https://www.igamingbusiness.com/news/young-adults-dominate-spelpaus-sign-ups. iGamingBusiness. June 3, 2019.
