Trade group calls for stronger response to Norsk Tipping’s regulatory failings in Norway
The Norway Association for Online Gaming has highlighted the lack of action against the state-controlled gambling operator.
Norway.- Carl Fredrik Stenstrøm, secretary general of the Norway Association for Online Gaming (NBO) trade body, has called for tougher action following the various failings at Norway’s state-controlled monopoly gambling operator Norsk Tipping.
Although the government has launched a full regulatory review of Norsk Tipping and the company’s former CEO Tonje Sagstuen stepped down in July, Stenstrøm said the government had yet to provide a “proper answer” for the issues. Those include draw errors, mistaken payments to customers, a self-exclusion outage for iPhone users and an incident in which thousands of players were wrongly informed that they had won huge Eurojackpot prizes.
Writing for in the Østlendingen newspaper, Stenstrøm said: “When neither the owner, the chairperson, nor the CEO takes responsibility, the gaming regulator must step in. The Gambling Act is clear: Norsk Tipping must operate responsibly and prevent harmful consequences. When legal breaches are repeated year after year, fines are no longer sufficient. The sanctions must be stronger.”
“The main issue is that Norsk Tipping has little to no incentive to improve,” he argued. “They face almost no competition, the consequences for making mistakes are nearly non-existent and the owner, the ministry of culture and equality, has traditionally allowed Norsk Tipping to chart its own course and destination.
“This is a strong argument for regulating the Norwegian gaming market more responsibly. With a licensing model, one could set clear requirements for all operators, including Norsk Tipping, and ensure that serious errors actually lead to meaningful consequences.”
While Stenstrøm says Norsk Tipping’s failings show why the government should open Norway’s gambling market to competition, that call still has little political support. Although some members of Høyre, such as Tage Pettersen, are in favour of following Sweden and now Finland’s moves to liberalise their markets, only the smaller Progress Party has adopted market liberalisation as a manifesto pledge ahead of the upcoming election on September 8.
Regional governments strongly defend Norsk Tipping because of its contributions to sports. Meanwhile, the Norwegian gambling regulator Lottstift has argued that it is finally winning its battle to protect Norway’s monopoly system, highlighting a rise in the number of players gambling with the country’s two monopoly operators amid an apparent decline in unlicensed gaming with offshore operators. It credits its enforcement action against illegal offerings.
Player numbers at state-controlled Norsk Tipping rose by 11 per cent in 2024, reaching two million. Norway’s other monopoly gambling operator, Norsk Rikstoto, which traditionally focuses on horse racing betting, saw numbers rise by 5 per cent to 175,000.
