Sweden’s Administrative Court of Appeal on Thursday rejected appeals filed by Hillside, the parent company of Bet365, and upheld earlier rulings that found the operator in breach of player protection obligations under the country’s gambling law.
The decision concerns two Hillside Group subsidiaries, Hillside (Gaming) and Hillside (Sports). According to the rulings, both companies failed to meet their duty of care toward players between 2019 and 2022, and they also violated mandatory deposit limit rules.
The appeals court confirmed the warnings issued to both entities. It also upheld financial penalties of SEK4 million ($401,010) against the gaming unit and SEK40 million ($4.01 million) against the sports betting business.
Court finds player interventions too slow
The court sided with Spelinspektionen, Sweden’s gambling regulator, and denied the operator’s appeal. In its view, Hillside did not act quickly or effectively enough in several individual cases in which customers showed signs of excessive or problematic gambling.
Under Chapter 14, Section 1 of the Swedish Gaming Act, license holders must continuously monitor player activity and intervene when necessary to prevent harm.
The rulings found that Hillside depended too heavily on automated communications, including pop-ups, emails, and spend reminders, and that the company was slow to escalate cases to manual review.
The operator also delayed the introduction of access restrictions even though players continued to display risky behavior.
“No limit” option stays live for over three years
From January 1, 2019, to April 18, 2022, customers on Hillside’s platform could select a “no limit” deposit setting. That option effectively allowed players to bypass the statutory requirement to actively choose a maximum deposit amount per day, week, and month.
A technical ceiling of SEK500 million ($50.13 million) existed during that period. However, Hillside did not communicate it to players or enforce it as an active limit, so the courts considered the option incompatible with Swedish law.
Penalties pass proportionality test in two courts
Both the Administrative Court in Linköping and the Administrative Court of Appeal in Jönköping concluded that the combination of warnings and financial penalties was proportionate.
For the gaming company, the penalty came in below Spelinspektionen’s initial proposal and was ultimately confirmed at SEK4 million. For the sports betting operations, the initial SEK65 million ($6.52 million) fine was lowered, although the courts still required a substantial penalty of SEK40 million.
Regulator’s review targets 10 high-loss players
Spelinspektionen focused its analysis on the 10 players with the highest losses over a two-month window, from October 17 to December 17, 2021, and examined five of those profiles in greater detail.
These customers made frequent deposits and recorded repeated losses, which triggered Hillside’s internal early risk detection system. Even so, the operator’s interventions were delayed and inconsistent.
The investigation found that Hillside relied too much on automated messages and did not escalate cases to stricter manual controls in a timely manner. In some instances, almost a month passed before the operator applied stronger restrictions, although the risky behavior continued.
Operator’s arguments fall short in court
Hillside argued that its early risk detection system was generally effective. The company also pointed to the limited scope of the sample, which it said represented an insignificant fraction of its customer base.
In addition, the operator claimed that Swedish regulatory guidance lacked precision on the timing of interventions. It further maintained that its “no limit” option was functionally capped and aligned with early guidance. The courts, however, found these arguments insufficient to negate the breaches.
Spelinspektionen stressed that the customers in its analysis continued to incur losses despite the operator’s primarily informational interventions. The regulator described the failure to enforce mandatory deposit limits as a long-standing systemic deficiency that is incompatible with the statutory framework.