Sweden’s Gambling Market Increased in Q2 – But the Number That Truly Counts Has Gone Unreported

Key Points

• Licensed turnover stood at SEK7.4 billion in Q2 2026, increasing by 5.1% year-on-year, although the commercial online segment increased by more than 7%, making the reported number an inaccurate reflection of market movements.
• The channelisation rate in Sweden dropped to 84% in 2025 for the third year in a row, while 2,186 unlicensed gambling sites were still in operation on 30 April 2026.
• Sweden introduced a credit ban on gambling in 2026, becoming the first EU country to do so, but still saw the licensed gambling market grow, proving wrong the gambling industry’s most repeated objection to regulation.

The 5.1% Figure Is Not the One Worth Watching

The licensed gambling industry in Sweden made a turnover of SEK 7.4 billion ($776 million) in Q2 2026, up by 5.1% compared to Q2 2025, according to preliminary figures published by the Swedish gambling authority Spelinspektionen. The term ‘turnover’, as defined by the regulator, stands for players’ stakes minus payouts.

Five-point-one per cent looks pretty impressive on paper. However, behind this number lies an interesting statistic. Online gaming and sports betting accounted for SEK 4.96 billion, growing by just over 7% year-over-year, making up about two-thirds of the total licensed market. The fact is that lower-performing sectors reduce the overall average to 5.1%. Thus, interpreting it as the growth of the online sector understates its performance by 2 percentage points.

Structural change makes this even more pronounced. Casino Cosmopol, Svenska Spel’s state-owned land-based casino business, closed its final venue in April 2025 after Sweden’s parliament voted to ban land-based casinos entirely. With that segment now gone, Svenska Spel reported negligible to zero turnover for the period. A market growing while a whole category disappears is, in practice, growing faster in its surviving parts than the top-line number shows.

What Each Part of the Market Actually Did?

State-run lotteries and slot machine games posted SEK1.43 billion, largely flat against the same quarter last year. Games run for public benefit, including lotteries and hall bingo, accounted for SEK863 million combined, with hall bingo steady at around SEK51 million.

Land-based commercial gaming, mainly casino operations at restaurants, recorded SEK73 million, up nearly 13% from SEK64 million in Q2 2025. That percentage growth is the sharpest of any segment in the quarter. Restaurant casinos rarely attract much industry attention, yet they quietly outperformed every other category on a percentage basis, which raises a fair question about how much of Sweden’s land-based appetite simply shifted from closed state venues to private restaurant operations.

The Credit Ban That Was Supposed to Hurt the Market

This is where the Q2 figures start to mean something beyond quarterly accounting. Sweden became the first European Union member state to impose a full ban on credit-funded gambling, with the restriction covering credit cards, overdrafts, personal loans, and buy-now-pay-later services. The ban came into effect in 2026, during the very quarter these figures cover.

The industry’s standard argument against a credit ban is that players simply move to unlicensed platforms, draining the licensed market. Sweden’s Q2 data does not support that. Online commercial turnover grew above 7% with the ban fully in force. Sweden’s consumer debt from gambling had reached a record SEK138 billion by January 2025, according to the Swedish Enforcement Authority, Kronofogden, and the credit ban was Parliament’s direct response. Removing credit as a funding route removed the debt risk, not the player. The Netherlands’ KSA and Germany’s GGL have both publicly referenced Sweden’s approach since April 2026; what they see now is a licensed market that kept growing after the restriction landed.

Spelpaus Dips, and the New Connection Rules Land in August

Spelinspektionen’s Q2 report also covered Sweden’s national self-exclusion system, Spelpaus.se. Just under 138,000 people were registered as self-excluded at the end of June, a 0.7% decline from the previous quarter.

However, there has been a significant reduction in that drop due to the toughened requirements for connecting with Spelpaus. Rules that were set on 23rd April and made public on 29th April have brought an obligation to provide a specific Actor ID and API Key for each of the licensees, along with the requirement for verification of these data before carrying out direct marketing and while registering and logging in. The new system will be effective from 1st August 2026.

Spelpaus drew significant public scrutiny in early 2025 after a documentary series alleged a data breach. Spelinspektionen pushed back firmly, stating that all register data is encrypted and that no addresses or telephone numbers of self-excluded individuals are held.

2,186 Unlicensed Sites and a Three-Year Channelisation Slide

As of 30 April 2026, there were 2,186 gambling sites without any Swedish license in operation. The number of sites without any licenses was further broken down as follows: online casino (976 sites), casino and sports betting (800 sites), and skin betting (113 sites). It has been noted that one of the major channels used by unlicensed sites to access customers in Sweden is through influencers, besides the affiliate network and link farm channels.

Sweden’s channelisation rate, the share of gambling that takes place within the licensed market, fell to 84% in 2025, down from 85% in 2024 and 86% in 2023. That is three straight years of decline against the regulator’s own 90% target. Sports betting held at a 96% channelisation rate, while online casino sat at just 81%, the weakest segment by some distance.

Gustaf Hoffstedt, secretary general of the Swedish Trade Association for Online Gambling (BOS), called the online casino figure “unacceptable” and pointed at over-regulation as the cause: “Anyone who understands the gambling market knows that the elephant in the room is that the licensed market is so tightly regulated that it does not appear attractive enough in the eyes of the consumer.”

Sweden’s New Regulator Walks Into a Complicated Picture

Peter Knutsson was appointed the Director General of Spelinspektionen in August 2026, for a tenure of six years until August 2032. Peter Knutsson is moving into this post from the post of Advertising Ombudsman of Sweden, after having worked in the Ministry of Finance, European Commission, and the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority. Niklas Wykman, Sweden’s Minister for Financial Markets has stated, “Sweden’s gambling industry needs to have very high standards of security and consumer protection. Spelinspektionen has a lot of responsibilities in this respect. I am happy that Peter Knutsson, with his vast consumer-oriented experience, has taken the post of Director General.”

Knutsson steps into a market posting growth, a credit ban in its opening quarter, and a channelisation rate declining for the third consecutive year. Spelinspektionen’s Q2 audit programme, targeting operators with more than 50,000 active Swedish players, is expected to publish findings by September 2026, giving Knutsson an early look at how compliance is holding up under the new payment rules.

Expert Analysis: Sweden Is Winning the Revenue Race and Losing the Channelisation One

Sweden’s Q2 numbers are good, and we are not here to argue otherwise. Licensed turnover is up, online is accelerating, and the credit ban did not tank the market. By any standard reading, this is a regulated market performing well under pressure.

But we think the channelisation story is being dangerously under-reported. Three years of consecutive decline is not noise; it is a direction. The licensed market can grow in absolute SEK terms every quarter while the unlicensed market grows faster, and both things can be true simultaneously. What Sweden is showing right now is exactly that pattern, a licensed sector expanding in size while steadily losing share of total gambling activity to operators with no licence, no player protection standards, and no tax contribution.

The BOS argument that over-regulation pushes players offshore has some logic to it. Tighter rules on bonuses, credit, and advertising do narrow the gap between licensed and unlicensed operators. But the argument breaks down when the licensed market posts 7% online growth in the same quarter the EU’s strictest payment rules took effect. If regulation were killing demand, the numbers would show it. They do not. What the numbers do show is a channelisation problem that predates the credit ban, predates the advertising restrictions, and has continued through three separate regulators without a reversal.

The real gap is enforcement reach. Spelinspektionen can issue prohibition orders against individual unlicensed domains, but 2,186 active sites as of April tells you those orders are not keeping pace. The influencer and affiliate network problem has been flagged in multiple regulator reports, yet the structure enabling it remains intact. Peter Knutsson’s advertising background is directly relevant here, since search and social traffic monetisation is precisely how link farms operate. Whether he applies that experience to enforcement strategy is the more important question heading into the second half of 2026.