Veikkaus to limit hours for store slots

Finland’s gaming monopoly will limit the hours of slots at retail outlets, service stations and cafes.

Finland.- The state-controlled gaming monopoly Veikkaus has announced that it will introduce limited hours for the use of its slot machines are retail locations and partner cafes, kiosks and service stations. Players will no longer be able to use slots between 9pm and 9am.

Betting point managers have been told to turn machines off between those hours. The change will come into effect on September 1. There will be no change to the hours of sales points for other products.

It’s the latest restriction to be introduced by Veikkaus as it advances with a series of social responsibility changes. It already requires players to authenticate their identities in order to play on slots, and it has significantly reduced the number of slot machines it operates.

Those measures contributed to a 12.7 per cent drop in revenue in 2021 to €1.10bn. Veikkaus’s casino games generated €323.4m, a drop of 30.1 per cent from 2020. Of that, €142.9m came from slots.

However, Veikkaus has asked the government to delay the implementation of compulsory identification for coupon games and lottery ticket sales due to its supplier’s delay in sourcing components.

Veikkaus vice president of sustainability Susanna Saikkonen said: “Veikkaus wants to offer the opportunity to go to the store without being able to play on the slot machines. Veikkaus is a company where all gambling requires identification in both digital and physical channels.”

In 2019, Veikkaus was ordered to reform its corporate governance following a series of high-profile failings on safer gambling duties.