Finland’s National Police Board has received around 50 applications for online gambling licences, more than a year before the market opens to competition on 1 July 2027.
The figure comes from the board’s Gambling Administration unit, which has handled licensing since the application window opened on 1 March 2026. In late March the count stood at 24. It has since roughly doubled, putting the number of prospective licence holders at the level industry estimates had projected for the market’s first full year of trading rather than for a point 12 months before launch.
Most applicants are international operators rather than Finnish companies. That composition has made the assessment work heavier, because the unit has to verify corporate structures and supporting documents issued under several different legal systems before deciding whether an applicant meets Finnish standards.
What the regulator is checking
Each application carries a processing fee of €29,000 in 2026, and formal assessment starts only once that fee has been paid.
The review goes well past company registration records. The Gambling Administration also examines the financial position of affiliated companies that could influence an applicant’s business in Finland. The stated purpose is to confirm reliability, test regulatory compliance and limit exposure to financial crime, including money laundering.
There is no closing date for applications. The unit is working to an average processing time of about six months and has asked operators to stop sending repeated status enquiries, on the basis that answering them consumes resources needed for the assessments themselves. Applicants have been told to file complete documentation at the outset instead.
The law is settled, the detail is not
Finland approved its gambling reform legislation in January, ending the online monopoly held by state-owned Veikkaus and creating a licensing regime for online casino and betting. The direction of travel is fixed. A large part of the operating detail is not.
Operators are still waiting for guidance on bonus offers, advertising limits, player protection obligations and how the rules will be applied in practice. Those gaps matter for anyone modelling acquisition costs or product scope before launch, and they remain open while applications keep arriving. Nordic advertising rules can also move quickly once a market is live, as Denmark’s looming ad ban shows.
Finland is not the only European market dismantling a state operator’s online position. Austria’s monopoly is set to end under a leaked draft law, putting two more European jurisdictions into the licensed column within a similar window.
Veikkaus keeps the lottery, loses online exclusivity
Veikkaus will retain its monopoly on lottery products and land-based gaming machines while losing exclusivity online. Its ownership remains under political discussion.
Industry consultant Jari Vähänen has valued the whole business at up to €4.5 billion, applying a 10x multiple to an annual gaming surplus of about €450 million. He splits that between roughly €1 billion to €1.5 billion for the digital verticals and about €3 billion for the remaining monopoly operations covering Lotto and gaming machines. Vähänen has also said Veikkaus’ financial returns have nearly halved over five years, and that a prolonged period of uncertainty could reduce the valuation further.
How many operators the market can carry
Estimates earlier this year put the likely steady state at 40 to 50 Finnish licence holders. That range has been reached before a single licence has taken effect, in a country of about 5.6 million people.
Other jurisdictions have taken the opposite approach to volume. New Zealand, with a comparable population, capped online casino licences at 15. Finland has set no cap and no deadline, so the final number depends on how many applicants clear the reliability and financial checks rather than on any ceiling written into the law.
Supervision changes hands at launch
The National Police Board will continue to run licensing until the market opens. From 1 July 2027, licensing and supervision transfer to the Finnish Supervisory Agency (Lupa- ja valvontavirasto), which will also start issuing gambling software licences and will monitor licensed operators using technical means.
The first licences do not become active until that date, and the application window stays open until then. Whether the outstanding rules on advertising, bonuses and player protection land early enough to shape launch plans, or late enough to force operators to rebuild them, will decide how many of those 50 applicants turn into a live Finnish business.
Source: National Police Board
