Finland is about to open one of Europes last big online gambling monopolies, and it is doing it with both hands tied behind the licensees backs. In November 2026, with the first licences already handed out and the market set to open on 1 July 2027, the rules are clear enough to read the fine print. Licensed operators will not be allowed to lure new players with welcme bonuses. They will not be allowed to pay affiliate sites to send them traffic. And they will be competing against offshore casinos that already take more than half of Finlands digital gambling spend and have been doing both for years.
The affiliate industry has started saying out loud what many operators are thinking. The question is wheather Finland just built a market that its own players will not bother to move into.
What does Finlands new Gambling Act actually ban?
The Gambling Act (10/2026) was signed on 16 January 2026 and published four days later. It ends the Veikkaus monopoly on online casino games, slots, betting and online bingo, while lotteries, scratch cards and land based slot machines stay with the state group.
Mostly, the marketign rules are where it gets strict. Section 51 of the Act lists the channels a licensed operator may use: its own website, TV, radio, print, events and branded search keywords, all subject to limits on volume and tone. Affiliate marketing is not on that list.... Neither is influencer marketing. In a law built as a whitelist, anything not named is not allowed.
Bonuses get the same treatment. Attracting new customers with a bonsu will be prohibited from the day the licensed market opens. Trade reporting describes the Act as removing the usual acquisition toolkit of deposit matches, free bets and welcome offers, and the draft rules circulated by the Ministry of the Interior in June 2026 kept that line intact.
Frankly, add in mandatory deposit limits, a ban on credit funded play, and a 22% tax on gross gamng revenue, and the Finnish model starts to look less like Sweden or Denmark and more like a controlled experiment.
Who has a Finnish licence so far?
Applications opened on 1 March 2026 with no deadline and no cap on the number of licences. Every applicant pays a €29, 000 fee whether it is approved or not.
Interest has been srtong anyway.... By 22 October the National Police Board had received 81 applications from 79 companies..... Four days later it confirmed the first 12 licences, with zero rejections. Later reporting at the end of October put the count at 18 licence holders and 63 applications still in the queue, with processing running at six to eight months per file. Veikkaus itself, which must split into seperate companies for its monopoly and competitive businesses, was not among the first 12 approvals. Also, Licences run for up to five years and none can take effect before 1 July 2027, when the new Permit and Supervision Agency (Lupa ja valvontavirasto) takes over from the police. , Penalties for breaches can reach 4% of the previous years turnover, capped at €5 million.
How does Finland compare with Sweden and Denmark?
The obviosu benchmarks are next door. Both Sweden and Denmark opened licensed markets years ago, and both allowed affiliates and some form of sign up bonus from day one.
| Rule | Finland (from July 2027) | Sweden | Denmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online casino tax on GGR | 22% | 22% (since July 2025) | 28% (since 2025) |
| Welcme bonus | Banned | One bonus, at first sign up only | Allowed, capped at DKK 1,000 with max 10x wagering |
| Affiliate marketing | Not a permitted channel | Allowed | Allowed |
| Influencer marketing | Not a permitted channel | Allowed with restrictions | Allowed with restrictions |
| Deposite limits | Daily and monthly limits set before first deposit | Mandatory limit at sign up | Mandatory limit at sign up |
| Crypto payments for licensees | Not a listed payment method | Not used by licensees | Not used by licensees |
The Swedish comparison is the one Finlands critics keep reaching for. Swedens own regulator found in a 2025 survey that 70% of peolpe who had gambled in the past year could not say whether their operator held a Swedish licence..... That is in a market where licensed brands are allowed to advertise through comparison sites.. Finland is removing that channel entirely and hoping players figure out the difference on their own.
Why are affiliates warning about the black markte?
Jacob Ljunggren, product director at Leadstar Media, made the case in an interview with SBC News on 3 November... His argument is simple... Players already use comparison sites to pick where to play. When dozens of new licensed brands arrive at once, those sites are the fastest way to point people at them... Ban the compliant ones and the space gets filled by promoters who ignore the rules and presetn unlicensed casinos as equivalent.
By prohibiting affiliates, you risk losing on both sides, Ljunggren said.... He compared it to a six point game in football every player an affiliate moves from an offshore site to a licensed one grows the regulated market and shrinks the unregulated one at the same time.
He has an obvious commercial intreset, and he is not the only one. Industry estimates suggest operators acquire somewhere between half and nine tenths of their customers through affiliates in mature European markets. Remove that, remove bonuses, and a new licensee in Helsinki has roughly the marketing toolkit of a bank launching a savings account.
Make no mistake, not evryone thinks the ban is permanent. Jari Vähänen of The Finnish Gambling Consultants told reporters in July that he expects relaxations, at least affiliates and possibly welcome bonuses, if channelisation stays low and gambling problems do not rise. In other words, Finland may be launching strict and planning to loosen if the numbers disappoint.
Are Finnish players actualy losing anything without welcome bonuses?
Here is the uncomfortable part for the bonuses keep players regulated camp. Most of the welcome offers Finnish players currently see are not worth much.
Finnish comparison site Kasinohai tested 50 offshore casinos serving Finland with real money in June 2026. The results: 44% applied wagerng to the deposit plus the bonus rather than the bonus alone..... 38% demanded 40x wagering or more... 58% capped what you could win from bonus funds, some below €100... And 74% restricted which games counted toward wagering. More importantly, Run the numbers on a typical offer and the shine comes off fast.. Our analysis of a standard €100 deposite with a €100 match at 30x shows how much the calculation basis matters:
| Scenario (96% RTP slot) | Total stakes required | Expected loss while wagering | Bonus value | Net expected value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30x on bonus only | €3, 000 | €120 | €100 | Minus €20 |
| 30x on depsoit plus bonus | €6,000 | €240 | €100 | Minus €140 |
| 40x on deposit plus bonus | €8,000 | €320 | €100 | Minus €220 |
| Denmark style cap, 10x on bonus | €1,000 | €40 | €100 | Plus €60 |
Only the tightly regulaetd version comes out positive. The offers that dominate the offshore market are negative expected value before you even hit a winnings cap....... banning them removes something that looks generous and mostly is not.
The real risk is perception, not math. A player who sees 200% up to €500 on one site and nothing at all on a licensed one does not run a wagerng calculation. They click the bigger number.
What happens to offshore and crypto casinos in Finland?
The Act makes clear that offshore operators are a target.. using the Finnish language is expected to draw scrutiny from the new regulator. And suppliers that illegally target Finnish players before 2028 risk being shut out of the B2B licensing sytem, which becomes mandatory on 1 January 2028... From that date, licensed operators may only use games from approved software suppliers.
Crypto sits awkwardly in all of this. Crypto is not a listed payment method for licensees, and Section 75(3) applies the gambling prohibitions to games played with crypto assets. Licensed deposits are framed as transfers from a players bank account, with daly and monthly limits that can only be raised from the next day or the next month. A licensed Finnish casino taking USDT is not on the cards.
In essence, that means the offshore crypto segment will keep doing what it does higher limits, lighter onboarding, and the promotional freedom licensees just lost... Whether that becomes a bigger advantage depends entirly on how hard Finland enforces against it, and the Act has not yet been tested in practice.
What this means for players and operators
For Finnish players: from July 2027, a licensed site will give you deposit limits, centralised self exclusion and a regulator to complain to. It will not give you a sign up bonus...... given how most offshore bonuses are structured, that is less of a loss than the marketign suggests.
For licensed operators: acquisition will run on brand, search, product and payment speed. Fast bank payouts and clean onboarding become the selling point, because nothing else is allowed to be. Look, For the affiliate industry: Finland is effectively closed for compliant sites.. Watch the channelisation figures in the first year. If they come in weak, the relaxation Vähänen predicts could arrive quickley.
Broadly, the same logic applies well beyond Finland..... Operators that already compete on payout speed and plain language terms, CryptoCasino.Vegas among the crypto native examples, have long argued that inflated match offers are a weak substitute for a good product. Finland is about to test that argument at national scale. If the model works, it will be becuase licensed sites learned to win on product. If it fails, the black market will not need affiliates to tell players where to go.
