Is Finland’s playing field level? Hippos ATG’s compliance chief on starting from scratch
Some operators will enter Finland’s regulated online market with millions of customers already on their books. Others will start with none.
The imbalance came up during Tuesday’s panel, titled “Finland’s waiting: The start of a new European market”, on the Regulation & Compliance Stage at SBC Summit in Lisbon. Antti Koivula, chief compliance officer at Hippos ATG, spoke alongside Paf’s Sverker Skogberg, Betsson Europe’s Ivana Pejic, Finnplay’s Brian Forth and NordPlay Group’s Emil Nilsson.
Speaking to iGB afterwards, Koivula said MGA-licensed operators will bring their existing Finnish customers, meaning there will inevitably be a big difference in the amount of data with which companies will enter the market.
Veikkaus has more than 2.7 million customers and can carry over those who played sports betting and casino games, a number he expects to exceed 2 million. The biggest operators may have more than a million players, several have six-figure bases and “a handful of operators start from scratch”. Hippos ATG, a joint venture between Swedish operator ATG and Finnish trotting association Suomen Hippos, is one of them.
“There was some discussion of whether the playing field is genuinely level,” he said. “But there’s no point crying about it: it has been decided and everyone will have to live with it.”
Long overdue
Operators can now apply for licences ahead of the market’s launch in July 2027. For Koivula, who has done his share of lobbying against the monopoly, the change comes late. “It’s about time it happened,” he said. “My personal opinion is that it should have happened 10 or 15 years ago.”
The natural moment, he argued, was 2017, when Finland’s three state-owned operators merged into Veikkaus. “It’s easy to say now, but all the signs were there back then,” he explained, pointing to a channelisation rate that was already slowly declining.
Since then, he recalled, Veikkaus’s gross gaming revenue has fallen by around 45% from roughly €1.7-1.8 billion, and its payments to the state have dropped by a similar share. Asked what finally pushed the state to act, he simply said: “Money.”
Regulator readiness
Koivula is more uneasy about the new supervisory authority, which takes over on 1 July 2027. It is still recruiting a director who is due to start on 1 January, leaving six months to prepare.
“Personally I’m rather concerned about whether they’ll be operational de facto from day one,” he said. “De jure, legally, they will be; there’s no doubt about that.”
He expects licences to be granted on time. But the regulator may not be able to give guidance at the start, or be ready to supervise the black market. Citing the regulators’ own publications, he said the Finnish authority will have less than half the staffing of its Danish counterpart, even though Denmark is a country of similar size.
Brought up to gamble
The market’s appeal starts with how much Finns already spend. “The Finnish market is really lucrative: per capita GGR is high and there’s a lot of potential,” Koivula said.
That spending has deep roots. Under the monopoly, gambling has long been present everywhere, with slot machines in grocery stores and other everyday places. Koivula gambled for the first time at 11, when the age limit of 15 was barely enforced. Veikkaus’s slogan played on the idea that money lost with it went back to society. “Finns have been really well educated to gamble,” he said.
Veikkaus itself remains state-owned. Talk of a partial sale is growing, but Koivula does not expect one before 2030 at the earliest. That means the incumbent will enter the competitive market with the state still behind it and a likely head start of more than 2 million customers.
For the operators starting from scratch, the countdown to July 2027 has begun. Whether the regulator will be ready to meet them is another matter.