When the Corona virus pandemic became a reality last spring, Swedish authorities grew concerned that consumers might not be able to keep their online gambling habits on a healthy level. Faced with the possibility of long-time isolation at home, we might spend more time and money on online casinos than we would like.

That was the main reason the swedish gambling authority last summer introduced a set of restrictions that applied to online casino games and slots. Among these restrictions was a new mandatory weekly deposit cap of SEK5.000 for consumers and a cap of SEK100 on consumer bonuses that the licensees can offer.

Critics have stated that these restrictions will only push consumers to play on unregulated online casinos outside of Sweden. Official numbers from august last year, just a month after the restrictions was introduced, show that the combined turnover for swedish licensees decreased by 4.1 percent compared to the year before. Those numbers might be an indication the critics are right.

So while search strings like “svenska casinon online” might have been popular before, they are now more likely replaced by “alla casinon på nätet” and other search strings yielding results from the whole world, rather than a small, restricted, market in Sweden.