Swedish court confirms fines on Bet365 operator Hillside over duty of care
The Administrative Court of Appeal in Jönköping has dismissed Hillside's challenge to penalties covering player protection and deposit limit failures between 2019 and 2022.
Sweden's Administrative Court of Appeal has dismissed appeals by Hillside Group, the parent company of Bet365, confirming earlier rulings that two of its licensed subsidiaries breached player protection duties under Swedish gambling law.
Hillside (Gaming) and Hillside (Sports) were both found to have failed in their duty of care toward customers between 2019 and 2022, and to have violated mandatory deposit limit requirements. The court upheld warnings against both entities alongside financial penalties of SEK4 million ($401,010) for the gaming business and SEK40 million for the sports betting operation, according to iGaming Business.
The rulings, issued by the Administrative Court in Linköping and upheld on appeal in Jönköping, back the position of Swedish regulator Spelinspektionen, which had argued Hillside failed to intervene promptly in cases where customers showed signs of problem gambling.
Under Chapter 14, Section 1 of the Swedish Gaming Act, licence holders must continuously monitor player activity and act where necessary to prevent harm. The courts found Hillside leaned heavily on automated tools such as pop-ups, emails and spend reminders, and was slow to escalate cases to manual review or impose access restrictions even as risky behaviour continued.
A separate breach concerned deposit limits. Between 1 January 2019 and 18 April 2022, Hillside's platform allowed customers to select a "no limit" deposit setting, sidestepping the legal requirement that players actively set daily, weekly and monthly caps. A technical ceiling of SEK500 million existed but was never actively enforced or communicated, which the courts found incompatible with Swedish law.
Spelinspektionen's original penalty proposals were reduced during the legal process but the SEK4 million and SEK40 million figures were ultimately confirmed as proportionate alongside the warnings.
The regulator's evidence was drawn from an analysis of the ten Hillside customers with the highest losses over a two-month window between 17 October and 17 December 2021, with five profiles examined in detail. These players showed frequent deposits and mounting losses that triggered Hillside's internal risk detection system, yet intervention was delayed and inconsistent, in some cases taking nearly a month to apply stronger restrictions.
Hillside argued that its early risk detection system was broadly effective and that the sample examined represented a small fraction of its customer base. It also said Swedish regulatory guidance was unclear on the timing of interventions and that its "no limit" deposit option was functionally capped and consistent with early guidance from the regulator. The courts rejected these arguments.
Spelinspektionen said the affected customers continued to incur losses despite interventions that remained largely informational, and described the failure to enforce deposit limits as a long-standing systemic shortfall under Swedish law.
The Swedish rulings follow scrutiny of Hillside's player protection practices elsewhere. Earlier this year the Dutch regulator, the Kansspelautoriteit, issued a binding order against Hillside after finding it had not adequately responded to signs that players could no longer afford their gambling, covering the period from 6 December 2024 to 6 June 2025.