Betsson folds on Stockholm betting shop

Since May 2008 Betsson’s land-based betting shop at Götgatan in Stockholm has been a thorn in the side of local officialdom, which has used a variety of bureaucratic tactics to shut down this defiant challenge to their authority.

This week they succeeded as the Swedish online gambling group decided to call it a day, having met its objectives of giving Swedish punters the benefit and freedom of choice, and focusing attention on the non-conformity of Swedish gaming legislation in relation to European Union law.

The shop will close its doors on December 12, 2013.

‘Our customers now have their betting shop at home. As we have reached our goals with the physical shop we now choose to put full focus on our mobile products, which have made astonishing progress this year’ said Magnus Silfverberg, CEO of Betsson AB on Wednesday.

A statement from Betsson says that when the company first opened the shop in May 2008 it was with the goal of offering Swedish customers the freedom of choice within gambling.

That led to a long drawn-out battle between Betsson and the Swedish authorities, who used a slew of “creative” strategies to try and force Betsson to shut down the betting shop.

“The betting shop has been important to the development of both Betsson and to the rest of the Swedish gambling market,” claims Silfverberg.  “Now that the issues around gambling legislation have been raised to the Supreme Court and have been proven to go against EU Law, we feel that the shop has fulfilled its purpose.

“We are proud of what we have achieved and that we have started a debate about the Swedish gambling legislation.”

Betsson´s focus on the mobile channel has already shown good results. During 2013 a Betsson AB subsidiary developed a new mobile site and in October the company also launched one of the Nordic market’s first Native mobile applications for gambling on Apple’s own platform.

This led to a four-fold increase in mobile gambling turnover for the company.

“Everything that you can do in a betting shop, you can now do from a desktop, tablet or mobile,” says Silfverberg. “Our future is mobile, like our players.”

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