Betfair Fined for Accepting Illegal Bets in Sweden

Betfair has gotten itself in trouble in Sweden where it has offered markets on events featuring young players. Because of that, the operator received a warning and was forced to pay a fee.

The Spelinspektionen, Sweden’s gambling regulator, announced its decision today. It explained that Betfair, a sports betting operator, offered markets for the U21 Allsvenskan, a youth soccer league.

Under the regulation from 2021, operators are not to offer wagering options for such events. In spite of that, Betfair offered markets for a whopping 148 matches between 2021 and 2022, taking a total of $109,235 (converted to USD) in bets from 224 customers.

The bets were offered on the Betfair Exchange where players can place P2P bets, wagering against one another. Betfair only takes a small fee for such punts, placing its total earnings from the bets at around $520.

Betfair admitted that the markets it offered violated local regulations. The company attributed the issue to the difficulties of manually setting the legal markets for each region. However, the operator promised that it will no longer offer U21 Allsvenskan markets and has implemented measures to avoid such issues in the future.

Betfair Will Do Better

Betfair’s violation is a serious one because of how regular it was. Furthermore, the Spelinspektionen believes that offering wagering on events that feature young players may have a negative effect on young sports fans.

While the compensation for the company was quite low, this does not change the authority’s assessment that the violation is a serious one. As a result, the regulator issued a warning to Betfair and slammed the company with a $388,270 fee.

The regulator took all the necessary steps to ensure that the fee is not disproportional to Betfair’s earnings.

Betfair can try to appeal the decision.

As outlined in the Swedish Gaming Act, serious violations may cause a licensee’s license to be revoked. However, Betfair’s cooperation and the steps it has taken to prevent such violations in the future have convinced the authority to be lenient.

However, the Spelinspektionen concluded that Betfair should be extra careful in the future, considering the seriousness of this violation. The regulator said that the biggest problem is how systematic the breaches were.

Betfair promised that its current remediation efforts will ensure that such a situation never occurs again.