Online Gambling Companies’ Interpretation of Duty of Care and its Implication for Responsibilisation of Gambling Related Harm

Background: The Swedish gambling market was re-regulated when the Gambling Act came in to force 2019. The re-regulation meant a shift from a monopoly-based to a licence-based system, allowing for commercial online gambling companies to operate on the Swedish market. The Gambling Act introduced the concept duty of care, which stipulates that gambling companies with a licence to operate on the Swedish market shall ensure that social and health protection considerations are taken into account in the gambling operations, this to protect gamblers from excessive gambling and help them reduce their gambling. Duty of care has been described as essential to tackle the negative consequences of gambling in Sweden and could be interpreted as a way for the Swedish state to allocate part of the responsibility for gambling-related harm to gambling companies. However, duty of care is vaguely defined. The way gambling companies interpret duty of care will thus have implication for their implementation, and to whom (and why), and how they attribute responsibility for gambling related harm. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyse how online gambling companies interpret their legal duty of care, and how their view of who is responsible for gambling related harm influence their implementation of duty of care

Method: This is a qualitative study based on online gambling companies action plans of duty of care, which is required when applying for a license.

Results: Preliminary findings from the analysis of gambling companies action plans show that some companies interpret duty of care as ‘responsible gambling or gaming’ and thus makes no distinction between the two. Further, echoing responsible gambling discourse which mean that companies allocate the responsibility of excessive gambling to the individual gambler and thus reduce their own responsibility. Some companies make a distinction between duty of care and responsible gambling and assume responsibility for reducing and counter excessive gambling, but it is unclear how. Further, there is a contradiction in some cases of how duty of care is interpreted and how companies interpret responsibility of excessive gambling. Through continued analysis of the action plans and we will gain more insights to how duty of care is interpreted and what its implication.

Conclusion: TBA