New Finnish Law Might Increase the Use of VPNs in Finland

January 26, 2025 By Janne Smith No Comments 4 minutes

Online gambling laws are constantly changing around the world. While online casinos have already been a thing for almost 30 years, the phenomenon has significantly gained ground in the last decade or so. Due to this, many countries and governments have had to figure out a way to deal with the situation and come up with laws to regulate online gambling.

Finland, a Nordic country next to Russia, Norway, and Sweden, is currently in the middle of implementing a new regulatory system and legal framework. In this article, we dive deeper into what is going on in Finland and why the new legislation may encourage more Finns to start using VPNs while playing casino games.

Note: Connecting to a VPN changes your virtual IP address as per the server location and ensures elevated security, especially for online casinos. Black hats primarily target financial data that can benefit them monetarily. However, connecting to a trusted VPN, like FastestVPN, offers military-grade security protocols and security features, guaranteeing digital anonymity.

Gambling in Finland

Ever since the 1940s, the Finnish state has had a monopoly on all gambling. As a result, most supermarkets, bars, and gas stations have been filled with slot machines. For the longest time, these slot machines, usually found in lobbies, were available for everyone aged 15 and above. However, the age limit was finally raised to 18 in 2010.

Nowadays, Finns are some of the most active online casino players in the world. According to research, only those in Australia, Japan, and Singapore gamble more than the Finns. One of the main reasons why gambling is so prevalent is probably due to what used to be very permissive age limits. A lot of the current Finnish gamblers already started gambling when they were under 18.

Finnish Monopoly Losing Traction

While the Finnish gambling monopoly has long roots, foreign online casino sites have been extremely popular for years. The first online casinos became available at the start of the millennium, which immediately caused Finnish Veikkaus to lose some of its market share.

There are multiple reasons why Finns have long been flocking to foreign online casinos. One reason is that, much like Finnish gambling, a large chunk of foreign online casinos are tax-free. The website Verovapaatnettikasinot lists several online casinos whose winnings come with zero tax implications for Finnish people.

Another reason is that, historically, online casinos have always had better return-to-player percentages than purely Finnish games. Naturally, this has to do with the free market having more competition than the monopoly.

Another benefit of the free market is having better online casino campaigns and benefits. Most online casinos out there will give Finnish players deposit bonuses and free spins in order to incentivize them to join. Under Finnish legislation, no bonuses are available from the monopoly.

Due to all of these reasons, the Finnish state-run monopoly has been losing customers to its online competitors. This, in turn, has led to the government wanting to do away with the monopoly altogether, opening the market up to outside competition.

Finnish Gambling and VPN

The exact upcoming changes to the Finnish gambling system and legislation are still hazy. However, there has been speculation that Finland will start to crack down on online casinos that do not get Finnish licenses. If this happens, some Finns might opt to use a VPN to keep playing at foreign online casinos that wish to remain outside the system.

According to EU laws, foreign online casinos that work within international rules can never be illegal in Finland. Even so, the Finnish government is allowed to legally try to restrict the use of these casinos inside of its borders. In other words, using a VPN could become a popular and legal way for Finns to circumvent potential upcoming bans.

As complex as it sounds, this is another typical situation where people might feel the need to use a VPN. While using it can be considered a way to operate in somewhat of a gray area, it is not illegal to use VPNs.

Conclusion

There are still many open questions when it comes to the upcoming changes in the Finnish gambling system. We will continue to monitor the situation and whether using a VPN could turn out to be beneficial to Finns wanting to gamble online.