Sweden’s gambling regulator Spelinspektionen has issued an immediate ban against Immortal Snail LLC, the company behind the offshore casino brand duel.com, after finding that the operator continued to target Swedish players without a licence.

The operator holds a licence from Anjouan, one of the autonomous islands of the Comoros, and has no local licence in Sweden or in the other markets where it is active, according to reports by SBC News and iGaming Expert. Industry coverage describes the company as based in Saint Kitts and Nevis.

No IP blocking, Swedish still on offer

Spelinspektionen’s investigation found that IP blocking against Sweden had not been implemented. Players logging in from a Swedish IP address could still select Swedish kronor and the Swedish language, and Swedish-language marketing for the brand was continuing.

The regulator issued the order as an immediate ban under the Swedish Gambling Act, which requires anyone offering gambling to Swedish consumers to hold a local licence.

The operator’s response has drawn attention across the trade press. According to SBC News, the company argued that Swedish is an international language, that it cannot control whether payments are made in kronor, and that it would not stop offering Swedish. It suggested that Sweden itself should be IP-blocked rather than the operator restricting access.

That stance is unusual. Offshore operators named in Swedish ban orders typically say little publicly and quietly restrict access, if they respond at all. An operator openly disputing the regulator’s authority over its Swedish-language offer is a more direct challenge, and one that tests how far a national regulator can go against a company with no assets or staff in its jurisdiction.

Anjouan licences under pressure

The case adds to scrutiny of the Anjouan licensing regime. Last month the Comoros government branded Anjouan gambling licences illegal and asked the UK for help in dealing with them, a move that undercuts the regulatory cover such licences have provided to operators serving grey and black markets.

Duel.com’s founder, Ossi Ketola, previously ran CSGOEmpire, which Spelinspektionen barred from targeting Sweden in November 2023, according to iGaming Expert. The brand’s marketing has also been criticised in industry coverage for its use of adult content creators and provocative influencer campaigns aimed at younger audiences.

Limits of national enforcement

The ban is part of a steady stream of enforcement actions by Spelinspektionen against unlicensed sites, alongside action against licensees such as its decision to revoke Charm Entertainment’s casino licence earlier in October. But the regulator’s tools against an offshore company that openly refuses to comply are limited. A ban order allows Spelinspektionen to pursue payment blocking and to refer breaches for criminal investigation, but the operator has signalled it does not intend to change course.

Sweden’s own licensed market has been under pressure from tighter rules, including bonus restrictions and deposit limits, which licensed operators say have made it harder to compete with unlicensed sites offering larger promotions and fewer checks.

Swedish licensees and their trade body BOS have long argued that channelisation into the licensed market is being eroded by offshore brands that face few practical consequences. Commentators, including SCCG, have said the Duel.com case shows regulators need stronger cross-border coordination and more pressure on advertising platforms to remove such operators’ marketing.

How Spelinspektionen follows up, including whether it moves against payment flows or seeks a criminal referral, will be watched closely by licensed operators in a market where the industry is already pressing the regulator to rethink its priorities.

Oklahoma’s ban on online sweepstakes casinos came into force on Sunday 1 November, making the state the latest in the US to outlaw the dual-currency model after lawmakers overrode Governor Kevin Stitt’s veto of the measure in May.

Senate Bill 1589, authored by Senator Brian Gollihare with Representative Kyle Hilbert as principal House author, amends Oklahoma’s criminal gambling statutes so that online casino-style games played for any representative of value, including virtual currencies, are treated as illegal gambling. Operators offering such games to Oklahoma residents now face criminal penalties.

A contested passage

The bill passed the Senate 48-0 on 2 March and cleared the House 65-21 on 4 May, according to the legislature’s own bill record. Stitt vetoed it on 7 May, describing the measure as “vague and overbroad”.

Lawmakers moved quickly to reverse him. The Senate overrode the veto 34-10 on 11 May and the House followed 68-19 on 14 May, after which the bill was filed with the Secretary of State with a 1 November effective date.

Scope and exemptions

The law is aimed squarely at the sweepstakes model, in which players buy one virtual currency for entertainment and receive a second, redeemable currency as a bonus. Trade coverage of the bill notes that liability can extend beyond operators to platform and game suppliers and payment processors, which raises the stakes for B2B companies that have built businesses around the sweepstakes channel.

According to reporting on the final text, tribal gaming conducted under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, charitable gaming authorised under the Oklahoma Charity Games Act and free-to-play social games without a prize redemption route sit outside the ban.

Oklahoma’s tribal operators, who run one of the largest Indian gaming markets in the US, backed the measure. Supporters argued that sweepstakes sites competed with tribal casinos without licences, taxes or consumer protections. The tribes have been protective of their exclusivity on several fronts this year, including over Kalshi’s tribal prediction apps and their effect on the state’s gaming compacts.

Stitt’s veto message reflected concerns, echoed by some operators and trade groups, that the bill’s language could capture products beyond online sweepstakes casinos. Opponents also argued that the state would be better served by regulating and taxing online gaming than by criminalising it. Neither argument was enough to hold the votes needed to sustain the veto, with both chambers clearing the two-thirds threshold comfortably.

Operators adjust

Most sweepstakes brands were expected to geo-block Oklahoma ahead of the deadline. VGW, owner of Chumba Casino, has told Oklahoma players about a new product called Chumba Spins, which reports describe as running on a pari-mutuel advance-deposit wagering model of the kind used for horse racing rather than on sweepstakes mechanics. Whether that structure holds up under state law has yet to be tested.

Oklahoma joins a growing list of states, including Louisiana, Indiana, Maine and Tennessee, that have moved against sweepstakes casinos, according to industry tallies. The cumulative effect is a steady contraction of the addressable US market for the model, which grew rapidly in states without regulated online casinos.

The ban also narrows the options for suppliers. Game studios and platform providers that have supplied content to sweepstakes operators across multiple states now have to track a patchwork of state laws, some of which explicitly reach the B2B layer. Several large suppliers have already reduced or ended their exposure to the channel as the number of restrictive states has grown.

Enforcement will be the next test. With criminal liability potentially reaching suppliers and payment processors, attention now turns to whether the attorney general’s office or local prosecutors bring early cases to set the tone for the market.

India’s Supreme Court has dismissed review petitions led by Flutter-owned Junglee Games against its May ruling that upheld Tamil Nadu and Karnataka’s bans on online games played for stakes, closing off one of the industry’s remaining routes to restore state-level protection for skill-based real-money gaming.

A bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan rejected the petitions in an order dated 15 October that was published on the court’s website on 26 October. The court condoned the delay in filing but declined oral hearings and decided the matter on the papers, finding no grounds to revisit its judgment. Several connected review petitions from other gaming companies were disposed of in the same order.

Who challenged the ruling

The lead case was Junglee Games India Pvt Ltd v State of Tamil Nadu and others. Alongside Junglee, review petitions were filed by Games24x7 and Head Digital Works, and by industry bodies the All India Gaming Federation and the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports, according to reporting by Gambling.com.

The petitioners argued that games of skill form a separate class from games of chance and fall outside the powers of state governments to ban.

What the May judgment held

The court’s judgment of 27 May reversed earlier decisions of the Madras High Court, which had struck down Tamil Nadu’s amendment, and the Karnataka High Court, which had quashed that state’s ban.

It held that once money is staked, the activity amounts to gambling regardless of the skill involved, and that betting and gambling sit outside protected commerce, so no fundamental right to carry them on can be claimed. It also found that states can legislate on public order grounds where online real-money games cause harm, and that the two laws were supported by empirical evidence.

That reasoning was a significant setback for the Indian real-money gaming sector, which for years had relied on the distinction between skill and chance to operate rummy, poker and fantasy products in most states.

Little practical change, but a door closes

The dismissal has limited immediate commercial effect because federal law has already shut the market. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act received presidential assent on 22 August 2025 and bans online money games nationwide, including those offered from outside India. Junglee stopped real-money operations in the country the same day.

Before the Act, Flutter had expected India to contribute around $200m in revenue and $50m in adjusted EBITDA in 2025, and Junglee employed more than 1,100 people.

What the review order does is remove the possibility that the state bans might be struck down if the national law were later diluted or overturned. Challenges to the Online Gaming Act itself are being heard separately and are unaffected by the order. A curative petition, an exceptional remedy the court grants only on narrow grounds, is the only step left in the state-ban proceedings.

Wider implications

For international operators and suppliers that once viewed India as one of the largest untapped real-money markets, the combination of a national ban and a Supreme Court ruling that skill does not shield staked games from gambling laws means any reopening would need new legislation rather than a court victory.

The outcome also strengthens the hand of other state governments that may want to legislate against online gaming in future, regardless of what happens to the federal Act.