Swedish appeals court backs fines on bet365 group over player protection
Sweden's Administrative Court of Appeal upheld warnings and fines of SEK 4 million and SEK 40 million on two Hillside companies, which run bet365, for failing to act fast enough on harmful play and for offering a no-limit deposit setting. The regulator announced the ruling on 14 October 2026.
South Africa has no licensed online casino market, so this ruling does not change anything here directly. It does show the standard a serious regulator applies to deposit limits and intervention. Offshore casinos that accept South African players often answer to regulators that look far less closely, so players should set their own limits instead of relying on the operator to step in.
What the court decided
On 14 October 2026 the Swedish gambling regulator, Spelinspektionen, announced that the Administrative Court of Appeal had dismissed appeals from two Hillside companies, Hillside (Gaming) ENC and Hillside (Sports) ENC. Hillside is the group behind the bet365 brand. The court agreed with the lower court that both companies had committed serious breaches of their duty of care and of the rules on deposit limits.
Each company keeps a formal warning. The financial penalties stand at SEK 4 million for the gaming company and SEK 40 million for the sports company. The court described the combination of a warning and a fine as proportionate.
What the operator got wrong
According to trade reporting by iGaming Business, the breaches covered the years 2019 to 2022. On duty of care, the finding was that Hillside leaned heavily on automated messages such as pop-ups, emails and spending reminders, and was slow to move to manual reviews or to restrict access when players kept losing heavily. In some of the cases examined, it took almost a month before stronger action followed.
On deposit limits, the platform let customers pick a "no limit" setting between January 2019 and April 2022. Swedish law requires every player to choose an actual upper limit per day, week and month. The reported view was that a technical ceiling existing in the background did not count as an active limit communicated to the player.
Hillside argued that its risk detection worked well in general and that official guidance on timing was vague. The courts rejected those arguments.
Why it matters to South African players
South Africa has no licensed online casino market, so Swedish rules do not apply here. What the case shows is what a strict regulator expects of an operator: real limits that the player sets, and human intervention rather than a pop-up when someone is losing more than they can afford.
Offshore casinos that accept South African players are usually licensed in jurisdictions where nobody checks for this. If you play at one, you cannot count on the same safeguards, so set your own deposit limit, keep a record of what you spend and use the self-exclusion tools the site offers. Our FICA verification guide explains what identity checks you should expect.
Please note that this story is about regulation in Sweden. SifuCasino has not tested any bet365 service and makes no claim about its availability or conduct for South African users.
What to watch next
The Swedish decision follows a binding order issued earlier this year by the Dutch regulator against the same group over duty of care. If more regulators apply the same expectation of fast, personal intervention, it may become a baseline that international operators are measured against. We will cover any further rulings that affect operators active in Africa.