The bet365 Sweden fine of SEK 44m (about €3.9m) stands after the Administrative Court of Appeal (Kammarrätten) rejected appeals by the operator’s two Swedish licensees, Spelinspektionen, the Swedish Gambling Authority, said on 14 October 2026. The court found serious breaches of the duty of care and deposit limit rules.
The penalty splits into SEK 40m for Hillside (Sports) ENC, which holds bet365’s Swedish betting licence, and SEK 4m for Hillside (Gaming) ENC, which holds its commercial online gaming licence. Both companies also keep the formal warnings issued in 2023.
The appeal ruling
In judgments dated 8 October 2026, the Administrative Court of Appeal agreed with the Administrative Court (förvaltningsrätten), which ruled on 13 June 2024 that both breaches were serious. The appeal court found that a warning combined with the two fees was proportionate and rejected both companies’ appeals, according to Spelinspektionen’s announcement of the judgments.
Spelinspektionen first sanctioned the two bet365 companies on 24 April 2023. It set the Hillside (Sports) fee at SEK 65m, according to the regulator’s decision against Hillside (Sports). The Administrative Court cut that figure to SEK 40m and set the Hillside (Gaming) fee at SEK 4m.
In the first appeal, the regulator itself had asked for lower fees of SEK 52m and SEK 5m, after recalculating them under a 2023 Supreme Administrative Court precedent (HFD 2023 ref. 25) on how sanction fees are set, according to its case pages for Hillside (Sports) and Hillside (Gaming).
What Spelinspektionen found
The regulator reviewed the bet365 site in Sweden from 17 October to 17 December 2021. Both licensees run bet365.com, and one player account funds both betting and casino play, the 2023 decision states.
From 1 January 2019 until 18 April 2022, players could set their deposit limit to “no limit”, with an undisclosed technical cap of SEK 500m in the background. The Swedish Gambling Act (2018:1138) requires players to set a deposit limit before they can gamble.
On the duty of care, Spelinspektionen found that monitoring and follow-up were too slow, risk levels were set too low and restrictive measures came late. Automated messages to players with high deposits arrived late and were rarely escalated to further action.
The decision cites individual accounts. One customer, born in 2001, had a monthly limit of SEK 5m, deposited on 53 of 62 days and lost SEK 261,593 during the review. Another placed 377 bets worth SEK 732,012 on 17 October 2021; the account was suspended the next day and reactivated after a phone call.
bet365’s response
During the review, Hillside (Sports) disputed the breaches, arguing that it had followed the regulator’s guidance and that its systems detected problem gambling in time, according to the 2023 decision. The company removed the “no limit” option and updated its action plan. Spelinspektionen called the breaches serious and systematic but chose a warning over licence revocation because of those changes.
Other cases brought by the regulator are collected on our Spelinspektionen news page, and earlier European enforcement actions are listed in our 2025 compliance review.
Next steps
Hillside (Sports) and Hillside (Gaming) can still ask the Supreme Administrative Court (Högsta förvaltningsdomstolen) to hear the case. Under Swedish administrative procedure, that court must first grant leave to appeal, and the request must be filed within three weeks of the companies receiving the 8 October judgments.
Source: Spelinspektionen
