The good people of Finland are growing tired with their gambling situation. According to a recently released survey, 31% of Finns want to abolish the state monopoly that currently runs in the industry in Finland.
The full results of the survey were announced on Kasino Curt, and were gathered by Bilendi Oy’s consumer panel which ran during the March 20-24 period. While 31% of participants are tired of state operator Veikkaus Ltd, 27% did not want to end the monopoly, and the remainder either didn’t have an opinion or refused to answer. The alternative proposed in the survey question would have been a license system, similar to what Sweden has recently adopted.
Age played a role in responses, it turned out. Recipients in the age range of 55-75 favored the current monopoly, with 34% in favor and 27% against, while those in the range of 18-54 felt the opposite, with 32% against and 23% in favor.
Gender also played a role in responses. 38% of men wanted to abolish Veikkaus, with 31% wanting to retain it. Women had much less of an opinion on the matter, with 23% wanting abolition and 22% wanting to keep the operator.
They noted though that 17% of the respondents had not gambled at all in the past year, which could help explain why so many had no opinion on the matter.
Despite Finland’s gambling problem worsening in recent studies, respondents were almost perfectly split if the state operator was helping or hurting the problem.
An argument could be made that with a licensed system, it could create competition to make both Veikkaus and outside operators site up and take notice. Without it, Veikkaus has been free to do pretty much whatever they want, which has included cutting jobs, while also investing more money unto increase their own online presence.
Despite the worsening gambling problem and a decline in public opinion, Veikkaus still has the support of the Finnish government. They will need to work a little harder to win everyone else over.
