European regulators are tightening their grip on foreign casino operators, and Novatech has become the latest company to be subject to enforcement measures.
Authorities in Sweden have ordered the operator to immediately stop offering its services in the country after concluding that several of its websites were targeting Swedish players without the required licence.
The decision was issued by the Spelinspektionen, which determined that the company had been providing gambling services to Swedish residents despite not holding the mandatory local authorization.
An investigation took place from February 23 to February 25, 2026, by the regulator to conduct a review of various domain names related to the operator. Some of the websites that were analysed in the review were qbet.com, mangacasino.com, slotexpress.com, 55bet.com and 30bet.com.
It was noted by the regulators during the investigation that Swedish players would automatically be assigned the country code of Sweden when creating their accounts via IP addresses from Sweden. This was interpreted by the authorities to mean that these operators were created for the purpose of servicing Swedish players rather than to actively exclude them from being able to utilize the service provided by the operators.
In addition to the fines, on a similar theme, there were other significant regulatory actions occurring during this week with the Netherlands regulation authority, Kansspelautoriteit, issuing a fine of €24.9 million to Novatech for illegally providing gambling services in the Dutch market.
Kansspelautoriteit indicated that this fine could have been in excess of €100 million had the penalties from the Gaming Charter of the Netherlands not restricted fines for companies to be 10% of their worldwide revenue.
The enforcement actions on back to back matters with Novatech indicates that there is an increasing scrutiny from regulators across the European jurisdiction and that there may be similar enforcement actions taken by other countries with respect to unlicensed operators.
