The Administrative Court in Linköping has overturned a March 2025 decision by the Swedish Gambling Authority (Spelinspektionen) that fined Malta-based operator LeoVegas, which trades locally as Roar Vegas. The penalty, SEK8 million (around $852,867), had been imposed for alleged breaches of duty of care obligations under Sweden’s Gambling Act. In a judgment dated 12 June, the court reversed the sanction in full, ruling that the evidence against the operator fell short of the clarity the law demands.
And the reversal lands at a sensitive moment for Sweden’s licensed market, where regulators have been tightening scrutiny of responsible-gaming practices.
What the Ruling Means for Licensed Operators
The decision carries weight beyond a single fine. It draws a line around how far a regulator can go when high-deposit accounts alone form the basis of a sanction.
- Evidentiary threshold reaffirmed: The court required “unambiguous” proof of a breach before a penalty can stand, raising the bar Spelinspektionen must clear in similar supervisory cases.
- No fixed intervention clock: The judgment confirms that duty of care provisions do not prescribe exact timetables, giving licence holders room to balance privacy against escalating restrictions.
- High-loss customers do not, by themselves, signal regulatory failure.
- Documentation pays off: Roar’s detailed action plans and system records directly undercut the regulator’s case, a reminder that audit trails can decide these disputes.
- Behavioural indicators questioned: The court accepted that rapid losses and long sessions can reflect ordinary sports-betting behaviour, not necessarily harm.
A Quarter’s Worth of Data, Twelve Accounts, Three Disputes
On 25 March 2025, Spelinspektionen closed a supervisory review covering the first quarter of 2024, from 1 January to 31 March. The focus was Roar Vegas’ responsible-gaming procedures. The authority pulled a sample of 12 customer accounts, deliberately picking the highest-loss players across two age bands: 18 to 24, and 25 and over.
Three accounts became the heart of the case. Each carried unusually high monthly deposit limits, ranging between SEK100,000 and SEK300,000, alongside markers the regulator read as warning signs: fast deposits, rapid losses, and extended session lengths.
Spelinspektionen argued that Roar had failed to give these three customers “sufficient assistance.” The regulator conceded that the operator eventually rolled out measures that brought gambling activity down. Yet it judged those steps late and inadequate, enough to constitute a serious breach. After a proportionality assessment, it issued a formal reprimand and the SEK8 million administrative fine.
How Roar Vegas Built Its Defence
The operator pushed back on several fronts. It pointed to a monitoring system combining automated alerts with manual follow-up, designed to catch and curb problematic play. Deposit limits and account suspensions had been applied to the customers in question, the company said, after a measured, voluntary approach that escalated restrictions over time rather than all at once.
There was also a statistical argument. the gambling operator behind the Roar Vegas brand noted that the indicators the regulator leaned on, long log-in durations and quick losses after deposits, are common among sports bettors and should not be read automatically as signs of harm. A long-running survey of Swedish adults supports the broader point: the share classified as problem gamblers fell from 2.2% in 2008-09 to 1.3% in 2021. That works out to roughly 57,000 fewer problem gamblers, a 35% reduction across the period.
Roar added that legal uncertainty hung over the sector before the 1 June 2024 amendments, particularly around processing the personal health and financial data that responsible-gaming assessments depend on. Which raises a harder question for the regulator: how do you penalise an operator for judgement calls made under rules that were themselves in flux?
Inside the Court’s Reasoning
In case no. 3061-25, the court found that the regulatory decision lacked the clarity and unambiguous evidence needed to justify a sanction. Its main considerations:
- The sampled accounts reflected high-risk profiles, but only three showed rapid, significant losses paired with high deposit limits.
- Roar’s mix of automatic notifications, mandatory deposit limits, account suspensions and manual follow-up succeeded in reducing gambling activity for the affected consumers.
- Some interventions could have come sooner, the court acknowledged, but the delays did not meet the statutory threshold for a punishable breach. Certain automated alerts went out promptly, in some cases the day after a first deposit.
- Because the duty of care sets no exact timetable, a reasonable-time standard applies, and given the round-the-clock nature of online gambling, that standard favoured Roar.
The operator’s records, including action plans and documented system upgrades, weakened the regulator’s claim of a clear failure. On paper, at least, the supervisory case rested on inference more than proof.
The Regulatory Picture in Sweden
Spelinspektionen has positioned duty of care enforcement as a pillar of its supervisory work since reregulation. This ruling complicates that effort. It does not strip the authority of its power to sanction, but it signals that courts will scrutinise the underlying evidence rather than defer to the regulator’s interpretation of risk markers.
For operators, the practical lesson is concrete. Systems that detect harm matter, but so does the paper trail proving those systems worked. The dispute here turned not on whether Roar acted, but on whether acting somewhat later than ideal amounted to a breach worth eight million kronor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why was the original fine imposed?
Spelinspektionen alleged that Roar Vegas failed to provide sufficient assistance to three high-loss customers with deposit limits between SEK100,000 and SEK300,000, treating the delayed interventions as a serious breach of duty of care under the Gambling Act.
What did the court decide?
The Administrative Court in Linköping reversed the sanction entirely on 12 June, ruling that the evidence was not unambiguous enough to support a penalty and that the operator’s interventions had reduced gambling activity for the customers involved.
Does the ruling remove duty of care obligations?
No. It clarifies that the duty does not impose fixed intervention deadlines and that licence holders may balance privacy with escalating measures under a reasonable-time standard.
What does this mean for other operators?
Detailed documentation of monitoring systems and interventions can be decisive in challenging regulatory findings. The precedent gives operators a clearer basis to contest sanctions built mainly on high-deposit profiles.
