Norway's state-owned gambling monopoly could face third fine in a year
Norway’s state-owned gambling monopoly, Norsk Tipping, is in hot water again for the third time in less than a year. The organisation could face NOK46 million ($4.4 million) in penalty fees after authorities discovered that its Eurojackpot and Lotto draws have been incorrectly handled for years.
Outcomes of all draws altered since 2021
The system-wide failure , impacting millions of players across the country. However, there is a possibility that it could have been going on for longer than this. The plausible fine represents 0.45 percent of Norsk Tipping’s turnover. However, the operator has three weeks to act before the Norwegian Lottery Authority makes its final decision.
The core issue in the failure lies in the way extra draws were made. As per the investigation, these additional draws unintentionally favoured tickets purchased through syndicates, gaming clubs, or co-operative banking setups, which then had a statistically higher chance of winning than individual players. Director of the Lottery and Foundations Authority, Atle Hamar, said, as quoted by media, “There have been wrong winners in every single draw over several years. This means that the error has affected millions of players.”
Norsk Tipping apparently became aware of the potential issue last year. However, the organisation supposedly did not investigate it further. Instead, it carried out two further draws after telling the Norwegian Gambling Authority that there may be issues in the system. The Norwegian Gambling Authority, Lotteritilsynet, launched a formal investigation once they learned of potential flaws.
Prior to the current incident that Norsk Tipping is in, the organisation faced a NOK4.5 million fine for mistakenly paying out NOK25 million on its KongKasino platform. In another case, the state-run gambling operator faced a fine of NOK36 million when it prevented players from excluding themselves from gambling platform—a responsible gambling breach.
Norway’s stance on gambling monopoly
Norsk Tipping has been facing increasing scrutiny as a series of lottery blunders come to light ahead of the upcoming elections. These errors have fuelled the debate over whether Norway should dismantle its monopoly and adopt a licensing system similar to that of its Scandinavian neighbours. Norsk Tipping has recently been plagued by a series of errors that have garnered negative media attention.
In early April, Lotteritilsynet blocked access to 57 gambling websites that were operating illegally in the country. This marks the regulator’s first blacklist as part of efforts to curb unlicensed gambling activities. The crackdown affected 23 companies behind these sites, with access being blocked through Domain Name System (DNS) filtering. This method redirects players attempting to visit illegal gambling websites to an informational page hosted by their internet service provider, clarifying that while the site itself is illegal, users are not breaking the law by trying to access it.
