Most coverage of Finland's marketing rules lists what is prohibited. The prohibitions are long and they are real, but a list of bans is not a plan. This is what is left.

The permitted routes

Your own website. Unrestricted in channel terms, still bound by the content rules below.

Your own social media accounts. The account must be the operator's own. This is the provision that removes influencers, affiliates and paid creators in a single line: a post on somebody else's account is not marketing on your own account, whoever paid for it.

Sponsorship. Permitted, and in practice the only route that reaches people who are not already your customers. This is why league-wide agreements are being signed before anyone holds a licence.

Brand advertising. Permitted, with limits. It may not be placed near schools, and outdoor advertising for higher-risk products is prohibited outright.

Bonuses, narrowly. Bonus play money and items such as free scratchcards are permitted within limits. Other bonus offers are prohibited.

The rules that apply to all of them

Moderation. Marketing must be moderate in content, visibility and frequency. Frequency is the word to notice: an operator can comply with every content rule and still breach the standard by sending too much.

Age marking. The age limit must always be visible.

No interactivity. Marketing may not be interactive, which constrains a range of formats that are standard elsewhere.

No targeting the excluded. Anyone on the national self-exclusion register may not be targeted. Finland has a single register covering every licensed operator, so this is checkable in a way it is not in markets with fragmented schemes.

What this does to a marketing plan

Three consequences follow, and they are structural rather than tactical.

Acquisition and retention separate completely. Retention runs through owned channels, which are permitted and measurable. Acquisition has almost nowhere to go except sponsorship and brand advertising, both of which are bought in advance, in units, from a finite supply. An operator cannot spend its way to players in month one the way it can in an affiliate market.

The sponsorship market clears early. Finite inventory plus 75 applicants plus a known opening date produces exactly what has already happened: a tier-wide agreement signed nine months ahead, conditional on a licence. Expect the remaining national properties to go the same way during 2027.

Frequency becomes the compliance risk. When the available levers narrow, pressure moves to the levers that remain. A personalisation system optimised for retention, operating in a market where bonuses are restricted, will tend toward more messages at better moments. That is precisely what the moderation standard constrains, and it is the likeliest source of early enforcement against licensees.

The enforcement precedent already exists

None of this is theoretical. During 2026 the National Police Board imposed conditional fines on six individuals for unlawful gambling marketing under the current Lotteries Act, the largest 100,000 euros, and attached a second, larger fine to one recipient who continued after a prohibition was already in force.

Those decisions were made against people with no Finnish licence to lose. From July 2027 the same enforcement practice applies to licensees, who have one.

A practical checklist

  • Map every planned channel against the permitted list, and treat anything running through a third party's account as prohibited unless you can show otherwise.
  • Set an internal frequency ceiling before the engine sets one for you, and document the reasoning.
  • Make self-exclusion register suppression a hard technical control, not a campaign setting.
  • Secure sponsorship inventory on the assumption that the market clears during 2027, and put licence-conditionality in the contract.
  • Check that bonus mechanics planned for other markets are legal here before they are built.

What we do not know

  • How the moderation standard will be interpreted in practice. No licensee has yet been assessed against it.
  • Whether the Licensing and Supervision Agency will publish guidance before July 2027.
  • How sponsorship activation will be treated where the sponsored party, rather than the operator, publishes the content.

See also our guides to gambling advertising and sponsorship of Finnish sport.