The joint venture is the second operator to have been approved for an online gambling licence in Finland.
Finland.- Hippos ATG, the joint venture formed by Sweden’s ATG and Finnish horse racing body Suomen Hippos, has announced that it has secured a gambling licence ahead of Finland’s regulated online gambling market launch. It’s the second operator to confirm receipt of a licence following Malta-based Wildz group.
Licensed igaming in Finland is due to launch on July 1 2027 under the oversight of the new Finnish Gambling Act, ending the monopoly of state-owned Veikkaus over online gambling in the country. The licence application process opened on March 1. Last month, the National Police Board reported that it had received 75 licence applications by September 22, more than had been expected for a country of 5.6 million people.
ATG, formally known as AB Trav och Galopp, operates Sweden’s horse racing monopoly and unveiled its partnership with Suomen Hippos in 2025 as part of its plans to enter the liberalised Finnish market. The joint venture will trade under the ATG brand when the market opens in 2027, citing the strength and recognition of the name among consumers.
According to the approval shared on social media, Hippos ATG Oy has been awarded a licence valid for five years.
“We have worked hard to build a completely new company in Finland and its operating models from the very beginning to meet the requirements of the new Finnish legislation,” Hippos ATG chief executive Mikael Bäcke said in a statement. “We have always been confident that we will meet the conditions for the licence. A positive decision is the most important prerequisite for entering the market, so this is a significant moment for us. “After this excellent news, we can focus even more strongly on the products themselves and on finalising the operational entity.”
The National Police Board has not yet publicly disclosed the outcome of any licence applications. It remains unclear whether the regulator intends to publish a list of approved operators or if decisions on other applications have already been finalised.
Applicants were required to pay a €29,000 processing fee and there was no cap on the number of licences available. Several operators had announced that they had applied, including Veikkaus and Hippos ATG.
Finland will be one of the last European jurisdictions to dismantle a state monopoly model in favour of a liberalised gambling market following Sweden’s transition to an open licensing system in 2019. The high interest in licences has raised concerns about potential market saturation. Meanwhile, some industry figures continue to question some of the measures presented by the government for the new regulatory framework for online gambling in Finland. Some argue that the cooling-off period and ban on affiliates would harm market channelisation.
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