Betsson has been ordered to repay €500,000 to a former player in Sweden who suffered from gambling addiction.

Tuesday’s ruling from Sweden’s Supreme Court upholds a December 2023 ruling from the country’s Patent and Market Court of Appeal.

Both courts found that Betsson encouraged the player to gamble using incentives and bonuses for a period from 2009 to 2014, prior to the reregulation of the Swedish online gaming market in 2019.

The Supreme Court found that the contract between the company and the player should be invalidated because the player suffered from serious gambling problems that the company was aware of and yet continued to direct “intrusive marketing directly to the player for a type of game that is particularly risky”.

The player spent €15 million playing online slots between 2009 and 2014 and lost a total of SEK8 million (approx. €727,000).

The court explained that under a provision in the Contracts Act, an agreement may not be enforced if the circumstances when the agreement was entered into were such that it would be contrary to good faith to invoke the agreement – having had knowledge of those circumstances.

“[…] the gambling company had access to and used detailed data about the player’s gambling behaviour, and this data showed that the player had serious gambling problems. The gambling company was therefore considered to have known that this was the case,” said the court.

The court concluded that it would be against good faith to rely on the gambling agreements made during the time relevant to the case and ordered Betsson to repay just over €500,000 to the player, which corresponds to the player’s net loss.

“We are naturally disappointed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in this individual case,” said Pontus Lindwall, president and chief executive of Betsson. “At the same time, we note that these are very specific circumstances and that the ruling is not expected to have any broader financial consequences for our operations.

“Betsson has long implemented rigorous processes for responsible gambling. We do not allow customers with known gambling problems to use our services.”

Shares in Betsson AB (STO:BETS-B) were trading 0.40 per cent lower at SEK198/50 per share in Stockholm Wednesday morning.