Svenska Spel CEO Marie Loob reflects on the latest interim report.

She is, however, concerned with the low reputation of the game industry and urges more gaming companies to join the fight against match fixation by self-cleaning their game range from items that are easy to manipulate.

“Protecting Swedish sports and healthy gaming must be more important than maximizing revenue in the short term. We can not count on raising the content of the gaming industry as long as the industry is unable to take that kind of tough but morally correct decision ”

The last quarter shows the success of our sports betting in the World Cup, we exceeded the goals for both sales and customer recruitment, and mobile phone growth is still strong.

During the quarter, we decided to invest more than SEK 30 million in research on gambling addiction . It is a young research discipline that needs a lot of support and with the help of research, we hope that the gaming industry will be able to bring even more effective measures to combat game addiction. Our agreement with the Research Council is extended to 2022 and we continue to support Sweden’s only professorship in gaming addiction at Lund University.

It feels positive. At the same time, I am concerned with the clear downward trend in the whole game industry’s image and reputation. The massive advertising from our industry may yield short-term profits, but it damages the long-term gaming industry’s reputation and it’s not good for anyone.

One of the things that definitely adversely affects the industry’s reputation is match fixation. The gaming companies need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem and that is why we do not offer games on youth games, lower divisions with low levels of control or easy-to-play game types (such as red card cards or first-order games) . We do this both to protect our customers and to protect Swedish sports.

During the quarter , an 18- and 19-year-old, who in turn, had mutated a 15-year-old to make a match. The sports magazine reported in the days in detail about how it worked and all the details there reinforced us in the perception that it is completely irresponsible to offer games in youth sports. We now invite more gaming companies to seriously join the fight against match fixation by self-cleaning their game range from items that are easy to manipulate.

Protecting Swedish sport and healthy gaming must be more important than maximizing revenue in the short term. We can not count on raising the perception of the gaming industry as long as the industry is unable to take that kind of tough but morally correct decision.