Hippos ATG compliance chief flags uneven start to Finnish market

Finland's licensing window has opened ahead of the regulated online gambling market's launch in July 2027, and operators are already weighing up how uneven the starting line looks.

The question surfaced during a panel called "Finland's waiting: The start of a new European market" on the Regulation & Compliance Stage at SBC Summit in Lisbon on Tuesday. Speakers included Antti Koivula of Hippos ATG, Paf's Sverker Skogberg, Betsson Europe's Ivana Pejic, Finnplay's Brian Forth and Emil Nilsson of NordPlay Group.

Koivula, chief compliance officer at Hippos ATG, told iGaming Business afterwards that firms already holding a Malta Gaming Authority licence will carry their current Finnish player base straight into the new regime, creating a wide gap in customer data between entrants.

State operator Veikkaus can bring over its sports betting and casino players from a total customer base exceeding 2.7 million, a transferable figure Koivula expects to top 2 million. He said some of the larger private operators could hold more than a million players each, several others have bases in the hundreds of thousands, and a small group will have nothing at all.

Hippos ATG, a joint venture between Sweden's ATG and the Finnish trotting body Suomen Hippos, falls into that last group. "There was some discussion of whether the playing field is genuinely level," Koivula said. "But there's no point crying about it: it has been decided and everyone will have to live with it."

A reform years in the making

Koivula, who has lobbied against Finland's gambling monopoly, argued the shift has come far later than it should have. "It's about time it happened," he said. "My personal opinion is that it should have happened 10 or 15 years ago."

He pointed to 2017, when Finland's three state-owned gambling firms were folded into Veikkaus, as the point when change should have begun, noting that channelisation was already drifting downward. "It's easy to say now, but all the signs were there back then," he said. Since then, he added, Veikkaus's gross gaming revenue has dropped by roughly 45% from a range of about €1.7 billion to €1.8 billion, with payments to the state falling by a comparable margin. Asked what ultimately prompted the government to act, Koivula answered simply: "Money."

Doubts over the new regulator

Koivula is less confident about the readiness of the supervisory body set to take charge from 1 July 2027. It is still hiring a director, who is due to start on 1 January, leaving only six months before the market opens. "Personally I'm rather concerned about whether they'll be operational de facto from day one," he said, while acknowledging the authority will exist legally from the outset: "De jure, legally, they will be; there's no doubt about that."

He expects licences to be issued on schedule, but said the regulator may struggle to offer guidance early on or to police unlicensed operators effectively. Citing figures published by the regulators themselves, Koivula said Finland's authority will be staffed at under half the level of Denmark's equivalent body, despite the two countries being comparable in population.

Deep-rooted demand

Part of the market's draw, Koivula said, is simply how much Finns already gamble. "The Finnish market is really lucrative: per capita GGR is high and there's a lot of potential," he said, pointing to a culture where betting machines have long been fixtures in everyday locations such as grocery stores under the state monopoly.

Veikkaus itself remains in state hands, and while speculation about a partial privatisation is building, Koivula does not expect one before 2030 at the earliest. That leaves the incumbent entering competition with government backing intact and a head start likely to exceed 2 million customers, while newer entrants wait to see whether the regulator overseeing them all is ready in time.