Norwegian politician makes case for ending gambling monopoly
Tage Pettersen says opening Norway’s gambling market would provide better player protection
Norway.- Tage Pettersen of the conservative Høyre party has reiterated his call for an end to Norway’s state monopoly on gambling. He says that opening the gambling market to competition would provide better player protection because many players were currently using unlicensed operators that offered no safeguards.
Gambling in Norway remains the preserve of state-controlled Norsk Tipping and Norsk Rikstoto. It’s one of the few European countries to retain such a structure. Finland, the other major Nordic nation with a state gambling monopoly, plans to liberalise gambling from next year.
In an interview with Moss Avis, Pettersen said Norway should make a similar move. He estimated that 50 per cent of online gambling in Norway currently takes place with unlicensed offshore operators. He suggested that the government should learn from the liberalisation undertaken in Sweden and Denmark.
“In Norway, we can create the best model based on the experiences from Denmark, Sweden and Finland. No one in these countries is advocating a return to a monopoly,” he said.
Pettersen suggested that Norway has among the highest rates of problem gambling in Europe but that data is incomplete since so many people gamble with unlicensed operators. He suggested that a competitive regulated market would benefit from a national self-exclusion register such as those in Sweden and Denmark.
“We would get better prevention of gambling problems with a licensed model. This was the main reason for the reregulation in Sweden. In Sweden, over 110,000 have now used Spelpaus, which blocks players from all licensed gaming,” he said.
Høyre proposed gambling market liberalisation as part of its election manifesto unveiled in September 2024. Elections in Norway will take place in September of this year, and Høyre is not the only party calling for gambling reforms. The gambling trade body Norsk Bransjeforening for Onlinespill (NBO) has expressed optimism that the market will be opened to competition by 2028.
Finland is already advancing with plans to launch a licensing regime for online gambling. The state gambling operator Veikkaus will be split, with one part of the company retaining a monopoly over lottery and land-based slots and the other competing in a regulated online gambling market. Meanwhile, in Sweden, the government is considering selling part of the former state gambling monopoly Svenska Spel, which has already closed two of its three land-based casinos.
Last month, Norsk Tipping was fined NOK36m (€3.1m) for failing to allow players to self-exclude during a period last year. The national gambling regulator Lotteritilsynet issued the fine in relation to a technical problem that prevented players from being able to self-exclude via Norsk Tipping’s iPhone app between January and May 2024. Norsk Tipping self-reported the fault in June after it had fixed the issue.
