When consumers are given a genuine alternative to a state monopoly, how do they behave? A new dataset from Finland offers one of the clearest answers yet.
In late 2025, Vedonlyontiyhtiot.com surveyed 1,007 active Finnish sports bettors – the largest study of its kind conducted directly with Finland’s betting community. The results point to a striking market reality; state monopoly Veikkaus retained just 3.2% of active bettors as their primary platform. The remaining 96.8% had moved elsewhere.
A Textbook Case of Consumer Rationality?
Economists have long argued that consumers, when given sufficient information and accessible alternatives, make choices that reflect their actual preferences rather than default options. The Finnish betting market puts that theory to the test in a remarkably clean way.
Finland is one of the last EU member states to operate a full gambling monopoly. Research published in BMC Public Health notes that the country has been “considering moving away from a full monopoly,” citing the same competitive pressures this data makes visible. Meanwhile, the European Gaming and Betting Association reports that multi-licensing has now been adopted in 27 out of 31 European countries – leaving Finland increasingly isolated in its approach.
What the Vedonlyontiyhtiot.com study reveals is what happens to consumer behavior in that gap.
Where Finnish Bettors Actually Play
Of the 1,007 respondents, 51.66% primarily used a platform licensed in Malta, 24% used an Estonian-licensed site, and 19.65% used PAF, which operates under an Åland Islands license. Veikkaus, the domestic monopoly, accounted for just 3.2%.
More strikingly, 98.5% of respondents reported betting primarily on a tax-free platform. Meaning a site operating under an EU or EEA license that exempts winnings from Finnish income tax. The monopoly operator does not offer this benefit.
The study is transparent about its limitations. The sample consists of Vedonlyontiyhtiot.com newsletter subscribers, active, informed bettors, not a population-wide sample. But that is precisely what makes it analytically interesting. It captures the behavior of the segment that matters most to understanding where competitive market share actually goes: engaged, high-frequency users.
Frequency and Spend
The engagement levels in this sample are notable. 45.35% of respondents bet several times per week. A further 30.47% bet once a week. Together, more than three-quarters of respondents are placing bets at least weekly.
Financially, 92.75% reported spending more than €1,000 on sports betting during 2025. This is not a casual audience. These are consumers making deliberate, repeated platform choices, which makes their near-unanimous preference for non-monopoly operators all the more significant.
The Bonus Question
76.5% of respondents primarily used a platform that offered a welcome bonus. The two most notable exceptions, Veikkaus and PAF, are also the two operators with the lowest usage rates in the study.
The study correctly notes that correlation is not causation here. It cannot determine whether bettors chose platforms because of bonuses, or simply ended up on platforms that happened to offer them. But the pattern is consistent with broader behavioral economics research on how introductory incentives shape platform adoption, a topic extensively studied at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in the context of digital markets and consumer switching costs.
What This Means for Policy
A 2021 systematic review in Current Addiction Reports found that monopoly gambling regimes “appear to perform somewhat better in terms of problem gambling prevalence and total consumption” but also flagged that they are “more prone to conflicts of interest.” The same review noted a significant gap in empirical research on how consumers actually behave under different regulatory models.
The Vedonlyontiyhtiot.com data helps fill part of that gap. When active bettors have access to EU-licensed alternatives, platforms that are regulated, tax-free, and bonus-offering, the evidence suggests they will use them, overwhelmingly, over a domestic monopoly.
This has direct implications for Finland’s ongoing legislative process. As European gambling policy research has observed, most EU countries have followed a trajectory toward licensing-based systems. Finland is now moving in that direction. What this study adds is ground-level consumer data showing that, for active bettors, the market has already moved regardless of what the legislation says.
The monopoly problem, it turns out, is not just a regulatory question. It is a consumer behavior question. And Finnish bettors have already answered it.
Data source: Vedonlyontiyhtiot.com Finnish Sports Betting Study 2025. Survey conducted November–December 2025, n=1,007. Margin of error ±3% at 95% confidence level.
