Veikkaus weeks away from OpenBet-powered sportsbook launch
The operator moved off the DraftKings B2B platform to enhance its competitiveness in the soon-to-open Finnish market. Veikkaus will join private operators in a competitive online gambling market as of January 2027.
VP Betting Andreas Reimblad tells iGB the operator has sought to become more competitive with its betting offering and shifting to the OpenBet technology has enhanced the quality of the product.
A competitive edge with in-house odds
The updated product is also partly powered by an in-house trading team which can generate odds on local Finnish sports including ice hockey, floorball and pesäpallo (similar to baseball).
“A big reason why we’ve used OpenBet is that we wanted those self-trading capabilities, as we really see it as a unique position for us. We can create markets and a product that no one else in the market can, with the accuracy that we can,” Reinblad says.
Generating these in-house odds will be part of Veikkaus’ competitive advantage, Reimblad says.
“For some of the international operators, Finland will be a quite small market overall. So this is one element that we can really stand out on. It’s not many that have their own trading team who are actually doing the odds compiling for the market. I would even state that we are the market in some of the local sports.”
In September 2023, Veikkaus signed a four-year agreement to utilise OpenBet’s sportsbook platform and managed trading services. The supplier won the tender opened by Veikkaus in an effort to improve its product suite and compete in the liberalised market.
At the time the deal was signed, Finland was operating an iGaming monopoly, but the government and trade bodies had shown interest in liberalising the market.
Finland’s market liberalisation process commenced in July last year, when the government released a draft bill outlining guidelines for an open gambling market.
Pivoting off DraftKings’ B2B platform
Veikkaus previously used the SBTech platform but, after it was acquired by DraftKings in 2020, the operator said it would wind down its B2B operations, in March 2021.
“Our current supplier DraftKings announced they were not continuing with their B2B element. The development of the product has been far from ideal, when we’ve seen other operators being very quick in developing their product and platforms,” Reimblad says.
“We are going live before mid-summer, probably sooner rather than later. It’s going to be before the football season restarts in August,” he says of the launch timeline.
Reinblad joined the operator in July 2024, coming from Kindred where he was director of sportsbook.
“I felt the timing for me was that I wanted to do something new,” he says of his move. Freedom to execute his own ideas was a key reason for his move to Veikkaus, he says.
Veikkaus EVP for iCasino and Sports Betting Jarkko Nordlund recently told iGB in an interview: “Everyone is waiting for Veikkaus to fail. And it’s my personal mission to prove everyone wrong,” Nordlund says.
The sportsbook update is part of a much broader restructuring and tech and product overhaul at Veikkaus as it prepares for Finland’s open iGaming market.