Casinos accepting players from Finland

What you must remember about gambling (online and land based) in Finland, the Republic of Finland, is that the country favours state owned monopolies and prohibits any sort of additional unauthorised operations in this industry. These government backed corporations are: Fintoto, RAY, Veikkaus and Alands Penningautomatforening (PAF). The former is in the horse betting industry, RAY has the raha-automaattiyhdistys or slot machines sector, while Veikkaus operates Finnish lottery. The last, but not least, PAF is in the casino, bingo, poker and sports betting industry, which now mainly operates online. What they all have in common is that they are non-profit organisations that distribute their total proceeds to help local organisations and communities.

PAF has actually been set up already in 1960’s for only one purpose – generate money for good causes. Since they are based in the autonomous Åland region, which is located in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, the main part of the profit goes there. Such distribution of profit has made their operations legal even in other conservative neighbour countries like Estonia. This may look very much against the European Union’s free competition endorsements, but the Finnish Lotteries Act in 2012 went through just well. It would be very hard for this Nordic country to protect their monopolies while keeping it safe and sound, but only the time will show what the next step is.