Sweden’s gambling regulator says influencers, affiliate-link farms and social media remain important channels for promoting unlicensed gambling to Swedish consumers, with the issue especially visible in environments popular with younger people.
In its latest review, Spelinspektionen said unlicensed operators are reaching players through livestreaming sites, affiliate link networks, sponsorship deals and major social platforms. The agency also said marketing remains a central way for unlicensed operators to reach Swedish players, who are exposed to it in many different contexts.
Affiliate link farms that redirect search traffic to unlicensed casinos were singled out as a primary channel. Some of the domains were short-lived, serving thousands of Swedish IP addresses before disappearing and reappearing under new names.
The regulator also said some landing pages used Swedish .se domains but redirected users to English-language gambling sites, obscuring where the operators were based while still aiming at Swedish players.
Livestreaming platforms such as Twitch and Kick were highlighted as places where influencers distribute affiliate links and promotional codes tied to unlicensed operators. Spelinspektionen said those promotions often used giveaways, leaderboards and skin-betting integrations, and suggested that streamers banned from Twitch under tougher rules were moving to Kick instead.
It identified Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, along with TikTok, Snapchat and X, as channels used for affiliate links, sponsored posts and undisclosed promotions. Semi-private groups on encrypted services such as Telegram and Discord were also flagged as difficult to police, while deepfake ads using Swedish public figures were described as a way to falsely legitimise unlicensed gambling.
Other tactics included esports sponsorships, banners on Swedish websites that were sometimes hidden behind paywalls or timed releases, and programmatic advertising and AI-driven tools designed to get around publisher blacklists. The regulator also raised concern about English-language comedy and influencer accounts that had recently begun posting in Swedish.
Spelinspektionen said its tip-off line had repeatedly received reports of SMS campaigns aimed at people who had self-excluded through Spelpaus. Under Swedish rules, a licence holder must offer self-exclusion, and marketing may not be directed at gamblers who have opted out.
The self-exclusion register was introduced with the 2019 re-regulation of the gambling market. Since 1 January 2019, players have been able to exclude themselves from games that require registration, and a report from the regulator said 99,496 people were on Spelpaus.se in October 2023.
That same report found that the most common main reason for self-exclusion was problems limiting gambling, at 60% in one part of the survey and 65% in another. The second most common reason was not wanting to receive gambling adverts, at 14% and 10%, and 41% of women and 32% of men said avoiding gambling marketing was very important.
Spelinspektionen said new technical requirements for Spelpaus will take effect on 1 August. According to the impact assessment, licence holders offering games that require registration must check whether a player is suspended on Spelpaus when they register, each time they log in and before direct marketing is sent.
If a check shows that the player is suspended, the licence holder must deny registration and access to gambling. The agency’s assessment also says there are three APIs for making Spelpaus checks, but some licence holders are not using them as requested, with some groups carrying out all checks against one and the same API.
A May 2025 inspection found that licence holders in a group were using only one of the licence holders’ connection details when checking Spelpaus. The proposed regulation is meant to ensure that the intended API is used and that each licence holder uses its own unique connection details.
The regulator said it had continued its work in the second quarter of 2026 against operators suspected of offering gambling in Sweden without a licence. It opened new supervision cases, closed some without further action after compliance, and said early identification and prompt supervision remain important.
Ewa Gabrielsson, an investigator at Spelinspektionen, said marketing is one of several routes into unlicensed gambling and that clear information and early contact can lead operators to correct themselves.
The agency also said several cases opened in 2025 had produced positive results, and in March 2026 it reported that an influencer received a 22-month prison sentence for economic crimes tied to unlicensed gambling promotion, which it described as the first known criminal conviction of its kind in Sweden.
Spelinspektionen said the proposed EU Digital Fairness Act, expected later this year, may bring stricter rules on manipulative design and targeted advertising, including tighter limits on influencers.
