Finland Attacks Online Poker Ads

Finland has supported online gambling, but they still have a national gambling monopoly. The government makes all of the rules when it comes to any form of gambling within the country. Their are three organizations that control gambling within the country and if an online gambling operator is not associated with them, then they aren’t legally able to offer online gambling.

Unfortunately, the Finland Lottery Act forbids any company other than the three state-owned gambling organizations to advertise within the country. Recently, a case was filed against the Finnish newspaper, Metropoli, because they ran advertisements for a foreign-based poker site.
With the aggressive tactics that online gambling operators use to attract Finnish players, the government has only one tool at their disposal to combat this problem. They can go after the local companies that accept advertising from foreign-based operators. Without the local companies, foreign-operators will only be able to legally advertise their online casinos over the Internet.

A positive aspect of Finland’s gambling monopoly is that it takes a large percentage of the profits and gives it back to Finnish citizens. On the negative side, the gambling monopoly is against EU laws and works against free trade among countries within the European Union. The gambling monopoly is gearing up to offer online casino games through it’s state-owned casinos in August.