Finland's Act removes most of the acquisition playbook. Affiliate marketing, influencer promotion and telemarketing are reported as prohibited, and product advertising is restricted. Sponsorship survives.
That makes it the most contested commercial territory in this market opening, and the negotiations are happening now, before any licence has been granted.
What is permitted
Sponsorship agreements are permitted, and the sponsored party may display the gambling company's logo in its own channels. This is reported rather than stated by the authority, and comes with limits: sponsorship is for general brand visibility, not for direct promotion of gambling activity or for driving deposits. Junior sport is excluded, as is any placement aimed at under-18 audiences. Outdoor marketing of the highest-risk products is reported as prohibited, and brand advertising outdoors may not appear near schools.
The practical reading is that a shirt front is available and a call to action is not.
The demand side is already primed
Yle Urheilu surveyed eleven clubs from Finland's two largest leagues, ice hockey's SM-liiga and football's Veikkausliiga, in September 2026. Every club that responded was willing or probably willing to work with an internationally licensed gambling company. Nine said they had already been approached by international gambling companies. Three saw ethical problems in the arrangement.
Earlier reporting indicated that large operators had approached the leagues themselves as well as individual clubs.
For an operator this is a straightforward finding: the inventory is receptive, the conversations have started, and any company waiting for its licence before opening them is late.
What it is worth
One club gave a number. KuPS estimated that the opening of the betting market could increase its sponsorship income by €300,000 to €600,000. For context, the club's stated player budget was €1.6 million.
That ratio is the story. For a mid-table Finnish top-flight club, gambling sponsorship is not incremental revenue; it is a material share of the football budget. It gives the operator negotiating leverage and gives the club a dependency.
The concentration problem
The total will grow. The number of recipients may not.
Industry consultant Jari Vähänen has said the amount of sponsorship money will grow significantly but will concentrate on elite sport and a small circle, noting that in Sweden and Denmark the sums increased while the number of parties receiving them actually fell.
The mechanism is simple. Gambling companies make sponsorship decisions on commercial grounds, which favours the sports and teams that deliver betting-relevant audiences: top-flight football and ice hockey, and the national teams. Smaller sports and smaller clubs, which under the monopoly received distributed funding rather than commercial sponsorship, are not part of that calculation.
An operator entering Finland should understand that it is buying into a redistribution, not simply adding money to a system. That has reputational consequences it will be asked about.
The gap worth noticing
Three of eleven clubs identified ethical problems. In the same reporting, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare's figure was cited: 151,000 Finns have a gambling problem.
We do not draw a conclusion from placing those two numbers together, and the clubs are not the regulator. But an operator planning a sponsorship strategy should expect that gap to be the subject of Finnish public debate during the first licensed season, and should expect to be asked about it rather than the club.
Finnish legal commentary has framed the question directly: whether it is responsible to take sponsorship money from gambling companies, set against the observation that few Finnish clubs can afford to make that value choice when competitors will take the money regardless. That is an honest description of the position clubs are in, and it is also a description of leverage.
What an operator should do with this
Four practical points.
Contract for the rules, not the market. Sponsorship agreements signed in 2026 and early 2027 are being written before enforcement practice exists. Specify what the logo may appear on, where it may not appear, and what happens if the Supervisory Agency interprets a placement differently.
Check the whole delivery chain. A club's channels may include streams that carry other gambling advertising. Our coverage of the offshore marketing economy and the 2026 enforcement cases describes why adjacency is a compliance question and not just a brand one.
Assume the junior boundary is hard. Most Finnish clubs run junior operations as a core function. A sponsorship that reaches the first team but is delivered through a club brand shared with junior activity needs care.
Budget for the debate. Sanctions decisions are public, and so is criticism. An operator whose first appearance in Finnish media is a sponsorship controversy has spent its brand budget badly.
Status of this guide
Permitted sponsorship and its limits are reported from published legal commentary and Finnish broadcast reporting on the Act, not stated by the authority. The club survey findings, the KuPS estimate and the concentration analysis are as reported by Yle in December 2025 and September 2026. The problem gambling figure is attributed to THL in that reporting. Confirm sponsorship terms with Finnish counsel before signing.
