Spelinspektionen bans Duel.com and three other sites
Spelinspektionen, Sweden’s gambling regulator, has issued an immediate prohibition order against Immortal Snail LLC, the company behind offshore crypto casino Duel.com. The decision came on 28 October 2026 and targets a company the regulator says keeps offering gambling to Swedish consumers without a Swedish licence. In the same round of enforcement, Spelinspektionen also banned the sites Ivibet, Hellspin and Slotsgem.
What’s new
Duel.com operates under a licence from the Anjouan Gaming Authority, not from Spelinspektionen. Immortal Snail operates duel.com under a licence issued by the Anjouan Gaming Authority and has become increasingly well known in recent years for provocative promotional campaigns across social media. According to the Blask Index, the bookmaker has a presence in the US, Canada, India, Finland, Germany, Poland, Norway and Spain, alongside Sweden, without holding a licence in any of these markets.
The regulator’s own review shows the company has not followed earlier warnings. Spelinspektionen’s investigation revealed that the IP blocking against Sweden has not been implemented, that Swedish kronor and the Swedish language still appear when logging in from a Swedish IP address, and that the company continues marketing duel.com in Swedish. The company itself has responded that Swedish is an international language and that, Sweden as a country should be IP-blocked, and that the company cannot control whether payments are made in Swedish kronor.
This is not the first time the regulator has dealt with the founder behind the site. Duel founder Ossi Ketola is not unknown to the Swedish regulator; he previously operated CSGOEmpire, which was prohibited from targeting Sweden in November 2023. Despite that earlier ban, the same person has now built a new platform that has quickly become visible among Swedish players too.
What it means for you as a player
A ban from Spelinspektionen means the casino has no permission to offer gambling to people living in Sweden, regardless of what the site itself claims. It also means you as a player are not covered by the protections that apply at Swedish-licensed casinos, such as deposit limits, dispute resolution through a Swedish authority, or protected player funds.
Spelpaus.se, the self-exclusion service covering the whole Swedish licensed market, only applies to companies holding a Swedish licence. An account on an unlicensed site like Duel.com is therefore unaffected by a Spelpaus registration. If gambling starts feeling hard to control, help is available through Stödlinjen.se.
The simplest way to protect yourself is to always check that a casino holds a Swedish licence before you register, rather than trusting what the site itself says about its licence or security.
The bigger picture
The decision is part of Spelinspektionen’s ongoing work against operators targeting the Swedish market without a licence. The fact that the regulator simultaneously stopped three further sites, Ivibet, Hellspin and Slotsgem, shows this is a broader enforcement sweep rather than an isolated case.
At the same time, reporting suggests these bans are hard to enforce in practice. There were reports from Sweden that very night of the suspension that the sites were still accessible via VPNs. This illustrates a recurring challenge for Swedish gambling regulation: a ban does not automatically cut off access for someone actively trying to get around blocks, which means much of the responsibility still falls on the player to choose licensed alternatives.
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