bet365 loses its Swedish appeal over a deposit limit you could set to "no limit"

Sweden's Administrative Court of Appeal in Jönköping has rejected the appeals of the two companies that offered gambling through bet365.com, leaving in place warnings and fines of SEK 40 million and SEK 4 million. The judgments, dated 8 October 2026 and published by the regulator Spelinspektionen on 14 October, agree with a lower court that Hillside (Sports) ENC and Hillside (Gaming) ENC seriously breached Sweden's duty-of-care rules and the requirement that every online player sets a deposit limit. For more than three years, customers could choose "no limit" instead.

What the court decided

The two judgments, case numbers 2341-24 for the sports company and 2342-24 for the casino company, are short on their operative part: "Kammarrätten avslår överklagandet", the court rejects the appeal. It agreed with the Administrative Court in Linköping, which had ruled in June 2024, both on the breaches and on the size of the fines, which it found proportionate. Spelinspektionen's announcement states that the two Hillside companies "offered gambling via bet365.com". bet365 declined to comment, iGaming Expert reported.

The deposit limit that could say "no limit"

Swedish law has required online players to set a deposit limit since the licensing system started in January 2019. The detail of the case is how that limit was offered:

• The rule: under chapter 14, section 7 of the Gambling Act, an online player must set a maximum on deposits, and the gambling ordinance asks for limits per day, week and month, with contact from the operator when a player sets more than SEK 10,000 a month.
• What customers saw: from 1 January 2019 to 18 April 2022, every customer apart from those returning from self-exclusion could choose "ingen gräns", no limit, for all three periods. Six of the ten customers who lost the most in the reviewed period had done so, the Linköping court noted.
• The regulator's view: reading a rule that says players must have a limit as permission to offer "no limit" was, Spelinspektionen wrote in 2023, "not only wrong, it is also remarkable and nonchalant".

From SEK 79 million to SEK 44 million, then no further

The fines fell once and then held. Spelinspektionen's 2023 decisions asked for SEK 79 million in total. After a 2023 Supreme Administrative Court ruling on how such fees are calculated (HFD 2023 ref. 25), the regulator itself argued in court for lower amounts, and the Linköping court went lower still. The Linköping court weighed the high turnover against several mitigating points: the review covered only two months, guidance on the duty of care was thin at the time, and the companies had changed their systems and cooperated. The appeal court left that result untouched.

The ceiling explains how severe the result is. For the sports company the courts put the maximum at SEK 72 million, ten per cent of a net turnover of about SEK 720 million in 2021, so SEK 40 million is about 56% of what the law allowed, by our arithmetic. For the casino company the ceiling was SEK 6.9 million and the fine SEK 4 million, about 58%. The appeal court said it gave particular weight to how long the deposit-limit breach had lasted.

Duty of care: a first warning is not the end of it

The second breach concerns what the companies did when customers lost heavily. Spelinspektionen examined play between 17 October and 17 December 2021 and built its case on five customers, chosen among those who had lost the most; each lost roughly SEK 259,000 to 386,000 in that period, according to the court record. Contact came mostly through automated messages, and manual reviews often followed a month or more later. The appeal court put the standard plainly: a licensee cannot wait to take more far-reaching steps, and if a first message has no effect, it must escalate quickly. The companies had argued that five customers were too narrow a sample and that their wider safer-gambling work was effective; neither court accepted that this cleared the breach.

The five customers in the case

The 2023 decision describes each of the five customers without naming them. Their stories show what the regulator meant by escalating too slowly:

• Customer 1 deposited on 53 of the 62 days reviewed and lost SEK 261,593. The company rated the risk as medium; the regulator considered it high. The customer self-excluded through Spelpaus on 27 December 2021.
• Customer 2 raised the deposit limit several times and lost SEK 386,400; a stronger intervention came only after deposits of roughly SEK 135,000.
• Customer 3 played without limits, placed 240 bets and lost SEK 259,372, with no recorded contact in the period.
• Customer 4 had set a daily limit of SEK 20,000, removed all limits on 4 November 2021 and lost SEK 314,490.
• Customer 5 played without limits and lost SEK 283,644; after a warning in September and a stronger contact in October, the account was closed on 22 November 2021.

What happens next

The companies can take the case further only if the Supreme Administrative Court grants leave to appeal, the same route other operators have tried without success, as Spelinspektionen's archive shows. We found no statement on whether they will. In 2023 the regulator said it had weighed whether the breaches were serious enough to revoke the licences and concluded that a warning was sufficient, citing the changes the companies had made. The "no limit" option was removed in April 2022.

The case is not the only one the same appeal court has decided against a large operator. In October 2025 it overturned a lower court and reinstated a warning against the horse-racing operator ATG over customer due diligence under the anti-money-laundering rules, while halving the fee from SEK 6 million to SEK 3 million. The two cases concern different rules, but both show the court accepting the regulator's reading of what a licence holder must do.

What is confirmed and what is not yet known

• Confirmed: appeals rejected on 8 October 2026; warnings plus SEK 40 million and SEK 4 million stand; the courts found serious breaches of the duty of care and of the deposit-limit rules; the "no limit" option ran from 2019 to April 2022.
• Not yet known: whether Hillside will ask the Supreme Administrative Court for leave to appeal; whether the fines have been paid; any public comment from bet365.

What it means for players

For anyone playing at a Swedish-licensed site, the ruling confirms what the law already said: a deposit limit is compulsory, it has to be a real number for each day, week and month, and the operator must get in touch if you set more than SEK 10,000 a month. If a site lets you skip that step, it is not following Swedish rules. Our responsible gambling guide covers limits, time-outs and self-exclusion in more detail, and what a licence covers explains why the rules a regulator enforces are the reason to care which licence a site holds.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Spelinspektionen - Domar i kammarrätten: Hillside ENC har brutit mot omsorgsplikten och reglerna om insättningsgränser (14 Oct 2026)
2. Spelinspektionen - decision page, Hillside (Sports) ENC
3. Spelinspektionen - decision page, Hillside (Gaming) ENC
4. Kammarrätten i Jönköping - judgment KR 2341-24 (8 Oct 2026)
5. Kammarrätten i Jönköping - judgment KR 2342-24 (8 Oct 2026)
6. Förvaltningsrätten i Linköping - judgment FR 4060-23 (13 Jun 2024)
7. Spelinspektionen - decision 21Si2726, Hillside (Sports) ENC (24 Apr 2023)
8. Spelinspektionen - Mr Green Limited not granted leave to appeal (example of the HFD route)
9. iGaming Expert (press) - Swedish court backs bet365 penalty for deposit limit violations (15 Oct 2026)
10. Kammarrätten i Jönköping - judgment 2422-23, Spelinspektionen v. ATG (13 Oct 2025)