For the second deep dive of this series, we will leave the windy shores of the British Isles, start
heading northeast and don’t stop until we see countless reindeer, 188,000 or so lakes, Santa
Claus and about 3.2 million saunas, roughly one sauna for every 1.6 people.

This sparsely populated nation has a fairly short but colourful history, and gambling has been an
integral part of the society pretty much since their independence. As we speak, a seismic shift is
well underway with decades of government monopoly giving way to a licensing model and a
cavalcade of foreign operators are champing at the bit to take a slice of this northern, probably
blueberry flavoured, gambling pie.

Standing currently as the last EU country to have a fully exclusive online gambling monopoly,
another Nordic powerhouse joining their brethren Sweden and Denmark as a regulated
gambling market is an eagerly anticipated event in the industry. Equally unsurprisingly, the move
has already been marred with delays and concerns about the upcoming regulations.

So let’s unpack what is going on in the Happiest Country in the World, shall we.

To me, to you, to independence.

To understand why Finland’s history is relatively short, a small groundwork of administrative
history is in order. The area we now know as Finland was under Swedish rule for nearly 700
years until early 1800s when it became the Grand Duchy of Finland and a part of the Russian
Empire until its independence in 1918. So there simply hasn’t been time to establish centuries of
history, like in the UK for example.

With that out of the way, gambling in Finland as we know it began almost as soon as the country
was formed in the 1920s, which is fairly early in western standards. This means that gambling
has been deeply intertwined with society from the get go and it remains as an integral part to
this day.

Veikkaus Oy, the Finnish national betting agency owned by the government, was formed in 1940
by the Football Association of Finland and the Finnish Workers’ Sports Federation to regulate
sports betting. At the height of its powers they controlled 20 different games with the crown
jewel being the national lottery known as Lotto.

The first winning Lotto numbers were drawn in January 1971 and the game became hugely
popular almost instantly. So much so that a 2023 study found that nearly half (2.5mil) of the 5.5
million population has said they gambled in the last 12 months with some sources stating 70%
of the people have played Lotto in the last 12 months. If you ask Finns however, most wouldn’t
even consider playing the lottery as gambling, it’s more of a…just a thing that Finns do.

Veikkaus Oy merged with Finland’s Slot Machine Association (Raha-automaattiyhdistys or RAY)
and Fintoto in 2017 to form Veikkaus in its current form, remaining as the government monopoly
to this day, overseeing everything from lotteries and sports betting to casinos and harness
racing. For now, at least.

The supervision and enforcement of the monopoly is, and will be, the task of Arpajaishallinto
(Gambling Administration) which was part of The Ministry of the Interior until 2008 when it
moved under the National Police Board. With the unification of the different administrations in
2017 it also reached its current form and it will remain as the enforcement and supervisory body
into the new era.

One arm of the government watching over another arm of the government, surely that can’t go
wrong.

The Finnish way

Now this is where things get a bit messy because as we have already established, a huge
fundamental reform of how gambling works in Finland is underway, and has been for some time.

With the power of Veikkaus declining quite rapidly in the last decade and a bit, seeing their
market share falling from 93.1% in 2011 to 73.7% in 2021. The chanellisation rate had also
plummeted to 65% in 2021 at the face of the challenges brought about mainly by the meteoric
expansion of the online offering, making it abundantly clear that a change was needed.

Until October 2023 this section would have been pretty much useless as the government
monopoly was still unchallenged, but a lot has changed since the first proposal was drafted. As
it often is with these things, deadlines have been pushed back and the proposed legislation has
already drawn widespread criticism from a variety of sources.

At the moment 1st of July 2027 is the magical date when licensed operators are allowed to go
live, but would we bet on it holding? Ehhh, maybe.

As we have seen recently in the Netherlands, overregulation in the form of overly strict
limitations on player acquisition and imposing low spending limits tends to have the opposite of
the desired effect and chanellisation diverts to where no one wants it to go – the unregulated
black market. No one but the black market operators, obviously.

Experts are very keen for Finland to avoid this mistakes, but there are already some signs that
this might not be the case. The biggest gripe has been the ban on affiliate and influencer
marketing, leaving many to wonder how the licensed casinos will be able to compete with the
torrent of advertisements luring players towards illegal offering in social media for example. The
ban on influencer marketing is easier to stomach from the point of protecting underage
individuals as they tend to be the main demographic of influencers.

As you probably guessed, other player protection measures are also strict such as ban on
auto-play, spins must last 2.5 seconds (no skipping animations!), notifications every 15 minutes
which halt play and stake limits of 10 EUR per spin for under-25s and 20 EUR for anyone older
among a host of others. Players on the other hand will certainly welcome regulations such as
mandatory RTP rates.

The specific technical regulations are too numerous to delve into, but let’s just say that the
technical regulations for the operators and suppliers won’t be a cakewalk, surely resulting in
some applicants receiving some unwanted outcomes.

Operators vs Suppliers

For obvious reasons this will mainly refer to the new regulations, or what we know of them,
rather than the old monopoly in which this distinction didn’t matter as much.

The National Police Board published in early June 2026 that they have already received 50
applications and these 50 will receive an invoice for 29,000 EUR. Once they have paid the
application fee, the processing starts and is estimated to take about 6 months per application.
As mentioned above, at the moment the date for the recipients of the B2C licenses to start
operating is 1st of July, 2027 but this was already pushed back by 6 months once.

B2B licensing will happen at some point in 2027, presumably around the same time as B2C in
2026, and from the beginning of 2028 all the B2C operators are legally required to use suppliers
which also hold a Finnish license, adhering to the same regulations.

The bill proposes a a gambling tax rate of 22 percent of gross gaming revenue for all
licenseholders, alongside a GGR-based annual supervision fee which is indicated to be in the
nice and tight window between 4,000 and 265,000 EUR.

Impact

As you have probably gathered by now, the state which has a strong welfare system is primarily
concerned about player safety above all else.

Finns are generally used to gambling at a young age and as a result underage gambling is
incredibly rife, with a 2017 study finding that 90% of their underage subjects were able to play
slots and 64% were able to place bets in sports or buy scratch cards. The ban on influencer
marketing in particular is aimed to combat this, but the impacts it has on the operators remains
unknown until the market actually opens.

The total number of people participating in gambling in the last 12 months has declined slightly
from 2019 (78%) to 2023 (70%) with men playing more than women, 75% compared to 65%.
Most common age groups who gamble are 45-59 year olds (76% gambled in the last 12
months) and 30-44 year olds (72% gambled in the last 12 months). Average amount people
spend per week is 12,2 EUR. However, men spend 18.3 EUR while women average only 5
EUR, highlighting the discrepancy between the two groups.

Alongside this, Finland has suffered the same plight as many other smaller markets and
match-fixing has been quite a significant issue in football but has also reached even pesäpallo,
the national sport of Finland which is their own version of baseball,

Back in 1998, eight teams fixed pesäpallo matches resulting in losses of 2.3 mil EUR to
Veikkaus with 460 people interrogated and eventually 30 people sentenced as a result. While
this was an isolated incident that tarnished the reputation of pesäpallo for a long time,
match-fixing in football seems to be an ongoing problem.

A Finnish iGaming lawyer who is an expert in the market, Antti Koivula, has been very vocal
about this issue in linkedin, bringing attention to the issue which seems upwards of 50 reports
being made in 2025 and “more than five but less than ten” being investigated by the Finnish FA.

One can’t help but wonder if the results of the World Happiness Index -survey are also fixed,
given that the current 7 year run Finland is on is simply unprecedented.

Finnishing thoughts

Finland is a market which draws a lot of attention and interest, mainly because gambling is
popular amongs all demographics and age groups. Finns are also fairly wealthy people with
disposable income and big international operators have already made their intentions very clear.

But we have to remember that we are talking about quite a conservative country where old
habits die hard.

Considering also the facts that Veikkaus will be given a head start to start operations, they have
already a chokehold on the consumer base which other operators have to somehow fight
themselves out of and any decisions to liberate the market will be faced with loud opposition
from various groups, the situation new operators are walking into is interesting to say the least.

Needless to say, once the market actually opens, there will be fireworks. How big, by whom and
what the fallout will be remains to be seen. But with such interest already shown by enormous
conglomerates who have deep pockets, Veikkaus has their work cut out for them.

Let the games begin.