The remarks were made at the annual event Almedalen Week in Sweden, one of the most important political forums in the country, during a gaming policy discussion arranged by Paf titled: “The industry we love to hate”.
The operator’s policy recommendations included a call to expand Swedish self-exclusion program Spelpaus to work preventively by centralising the players limits so that it applies equally to all operators.
More notably, though, it argued that gambling ads should be prohibited on TV and outdoors as well as any sponsorship and exposure of gaming ads connected to sports.
The discussions included members of parliament (MP) from the Centre Party and the Moderates, as well as the Sweden Democrats. While all politicians on the panel agreed that the situation with licensed online gaming is better than when the market was unregulated, they said improvements are still possible.
Catarina Deremar, member of parliament for the Centre Party said: “It was a broad majority who adopted the gaming law and we established the law on what we knew right then, in order to get law and order on the gambling market. Then of course you need to try to be as clear as you can so the law can be interpreted well.”
In addition, it called for an increase in the gambling tax rate from 18% to 21% – with the increased income used to compensate for the loss of sponsorship money for sporting organisations.
“Our party supports the regulation we have today and we want to appoint a proper investigation after five years to fix what is needed,” added Sweden Democrat MP Angelica Lundberg,
“The regulation we have today, I would give it 2.5 points on a five-point scale. You need to adjust the margins in it,” said Daniel Wykman, MP for the Moderates.
Sweden recently announced rules to reduce the amount of gambling advertisements in the country, but the government declined to go through with attempts to ban all daytime ads, optiming instead to introduce a requirement for “adjusted moderation”.
The discussions come after the recent banning of all gambling advertising in Belgian as well as all broadcast ads in the Netherlands.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/paf-calls-for-ad-ban-and-higher-taxes-in-sweden/
