Global Gaming CEO: I heard about licence revocation eight minutes before the public
Tobias Fagerlund criticises lack of clarity and communication from Swedish regulator around revocation case
Global Gaming CEO Tobias Fagerlund has slammed the Swedish Gaming Authority (SGA) for a lack of communication and clarity in its dealings with the company around its licence revocation.
The SGA sent out a press release announcing the revocation at 8am on 17 June, and Fagerlund said he received an email with the news at 7.52am.
“I got it eight minutes before it was released,” Fagerlund told EGR in a phone interview Thursday.
“It was just pure luck that I was awake and could do the things that we needed to do, meaning close down Sweden and tell Nasdaq that it would be a good idea to stop our shares for trading that day.
“I was shocked,” Fagerlund added. “I wasn’t warned at all. We thought we had a good dialogue with the SGA. We ourselves made them aware of issues we had in January with deposit limits not working and we corrected them as soon as we could.”
“The SGA is not really easy to speak with,” Fagerlund said. ”That’s an experience that we share with many operators in Sweden.”
Fellow operator Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) also criticised the lack of clarity in Swedish regulation this week.
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Fagerlund described the full licence revocation as “disproportionate” and lacking legal support, suggesting the SGA was out to make an example of Global Gaming.
“Looking at the other cases recently, I am even more surprised,” the CEO added. “If you look at the individual things they tied together in order to withdraw our licence, you can argue that they are less bad than a lot of the recent cases,” Fagerlund said.
“I think we have a policy maker obsessed with this subject and intent on making an example of us. I understand why. We went from nothing to a lot in a very short time and were somewhat aggressive in our marketing.
“We were too visible in the early days of January when there was a lot of negative publicity around gaming in Sweden. And we were associated a lot with the marketing. If you actually look at what companies increased your marketing most during this period of time, Svenska Spel and ATG and some others stick out. But obviously, we were chosen. They wanted to set an example and we were the one chosen for that.”
Tobias Fagerlund
Global Gaming has lost two appeals for injunctive relief that would allow it to operate in Sweden while its full appeal of the licence revocation is being heard.
It is now taking the injunctive relief case to the Swedish Supreme Court, but has also agreed a deal with platform provider Finnplay that could allow the relaunch of Ninja Casino in Sweden as a white label.
“We’re not sitting with our arms crossed and waiting for the for the government to close us down,” Fagerlund said.
The SGA had yet to respond to request for comment at the time of writing.