ComeOn hit with three Swedish fines for offering bets on under-18s
Operator’s ComeOn, Hajper and Faster brands all fined for same offence, with penalties totalling £1.7m
ComeOn has been hit with three separate fines by the Swedish regulator (SGA) today for offering betting on games where the majority of participants were under 18.
Fines were issued against four brands, three of which are operated by ComeOn on separate licences (Hajper, Faster and ComeOn).
ComeOn was fined 20m SEK in total (£1.7m), while independent brand Legolas.bet was fined £8,500. Fines are based on the companies’ estimated turnover for the full year 2019.
ComeOn is already appealing a previous fine from the SGA for the exact same offence via its Casinostugan brand. ComeOn has multiple Swedish licences for a variety of reasons.
The operator could not be reached for comment this morning but CEO Lahcene Merzoug has previously criticised the “slippery slope” the regulator is on thanks to a lack of clarity around various laws.
ComeOn CEO Lahcene Merzoug
Swedish law says operators should not take bets on events where the majority of participants are under the age of 18, but operators claim they have been fined when only one participant was under 18.
“All these cases will probably be tried in in court,” Merzoug said last month. “And then maybe we’ll have clarity but it’s a bit of a waste of time because it could have been defined earlier on to avoid confusion for us and more importantly players.”
Nine operators have now been fined over the under 18 betting law, with the uncertainty causing GiG to close its Swedish B2C sportsbook brands rather than risk further fines as it awaits clarity form the SGA.
ComeOn said in a statement today the error had originated with a third-party provider and resulted in a “very limited amount of games” containing underage players being made available for betting.
“As soon as this was discovered we fixed the issue and has since then made several changes to make sure that this will not happen again,” the firm said. “However, we believe that SGA’s decision to fine our three brands is unproportional to the violation and our legal team is currently looking into a potential appeal.”
Full breakdowns of the four new fines can be found here.