Sweden bans Novatech in second European blow
Table of contents
- Sweden’s Spelinspektionen has issued an immediate ban against Novatech Solutions for offering gambling to Swedish players without a licence.
- The decision, published on 10 March 2026, follows a late February review of domains including qbet.com and 55bet.com.
- The enforcement arrives within the same week as the Dutch KSA’s record €24.8m fine against the same operator.
Sweden’s gambling regulator has banned Novatech Solutions from operating in the country after finding the Curaçao-licensed operator was actively targeting Swedish consumers without a domestic licence.
The prohibition, published by Spelinspektionen on 10 March 2026, takes immediate effect and marks the second major regulatory action against Novatech within the same week.
Regulator’s findings
Spelinspektionen conducted a late February review of Novatech-operated domains, including qbet.com and 55bet.com, the same brands at the centre of the concurrent Dutch enforcement action.
Investigators found that Swedish users faced no geo-blocks when accessing the platforms, and that the company’s brands were promoted through localised marketing directed at Swedish consumers. Spelinspektionen gave Novatech the opportunity to submit a statement in response to its findings, but received no reply.
The regulator concluded that Novatech Solutions holds no licence to provide gambling services in Sweden and issued a prohibition with immediate effect, citing player protection as the basis for the urgency of its decision.
Second blow within days
The Swedish action compounds a damaging week for Novatech.
On 10 March, the Dutch gambling authority Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) issued a record fine of €24,846,000 against the operator, the largest single penalty the authority has ever levied against an illegal operator. The fine follows an earlier coercive order issued against Novatech in late 2024, which the company failed to act on.
The KSA’s action also included a parallel fine of €1,795,000 against Fortaprime SRL, a separate operator found to be offering unlicensed gambling to Dutch players via multiple domains.
In the Novatech case, the KSA found that Dutch users could register accounts, deposit funds and gamble on qbet.com and 55bet.com without encountering any technical restrictions.
The regulator identified serious consumer protection and anti-money laundering failures, including the absence of visible age verification and the acceptance of cryptocurrency and anonymous payment methods.
Michel Groothuizen, KSA Chairman, said:
“Novatech earned hundreds of millions from its illegal offer, and did so mainly from Dutch players. A fine of €24m sounds impressive, but without the maximum of 10% the fine would have come to more than €100m; an amount that would be better suited to this violation.”
Both enforcement cases involved overlapping domains, with qbet.com and 55bet.com appearing in findings from both regulators.
Enforcement limits
Questions remain over whether Novatech will comply with either action. The operator has no physical presence in the Netherlands or Sweden and is registered in Curaçao, limiting the practical reach of both regulators.
The KSA had previously warned Novatech to cease operations before escalating to a fine, a warning that went unheeded.
The Dutch fine was itself constrained by a statutory cap of 10% of global turnover, preventing the KSA from imposing a penalty the regulator considered proportionate to the scale of illegal revenues earned.
Sweden has faced persistent challenges from the offshore market since re-regulating in 2019. The Spelinspektionen ban on CGG Entertainment last year targeted a comparable pattern, a Curaçao-licensed operator using localised marketing to reach Swedish players without a domestic licence.
The simultaneous actions from two European regulators against the same operator point to increasing cross-border scrutiny of offshore gambling groups. For operators running unlicensed brands across multiple regulated markets, the Novatech case illustrates how enforcement can compound rapidly.
Keep reading
Do you have a story worth sharing?
Send it over to our editors!
