Operators entering Finland's regulated market will not start from the same place, Antti Koivula, chief compliance officer at Hippos ATG, said on a panel at SBC Summit in Lisbon titled 'Finland's waiting: The start of a new European market'.
Veikkaus holds more than 2.7 million customers and will migrate those who played sports and casino; Koivula puts that above 2 million people. The largest operators may bring databases of over a million players, several others six figures. 'A handful of operators start from zero,' he said. Hippos ATG, a joint venture of Sweden's ATG and Suomen Hippos, is among them. Paf, Betsson Europe, Finnplay and NordPlay Group were also represented on the Regulation & Compliance stage.
Differing starting points
Licence applications are already open. The market launches in July 2027. Operators holding MGA licences will bring their own Finnish customers, so the volume of data at entry will vary severalfold. Whether the terms are the same for everyone was raised on the panel. 'There is no point crying about it: the decision is made and everyone will have to live with it,' Koivula said.
His larger doubt is the new supervisory authority, which begins work on 1 July 2027. Its directors are still being recruited and the appointment is due on 1 January, leaving six months to prepare. Koivula is not convinced the regulator will be operating de facto from day one. By the authority's own publications, the Finnish regulator's headcount will be less than half that of Denmark's for a comparable country size. That is thin both for consultations at the start and for policing the black market.
Koivula calls the Finnish market lucrative: GGR per capita is high and the potential is large. Under the monopoly gambling was everywhere, with slots in grocery stores. Veikkaus GGR has now fallen by roughly 45% from €1.7–1.8 billion, and payments to the state are down by a similar share. Koivula believes the reform should have happened 10–15 years ago, and that the natural moment was 2017, when three state companies were merged into Veikkaus. Veikkaus remains state-owned; a partial sale is under discussion, but he does not expect one before 2030. For those starting from zero, the countdown to July 2027 is already running.
