Slot players can expect a little less action on the high streets and other public areas in Finland next year. Veikkaus, the Finnish state-owned gaming monopoly, has announced it will reduce the number of slots in kiosks, supermarkets and service stations by about 50 percent over time, reducing the overall inventory from 18,500 to 10,500.
Roughly 3,500 of the slot machines will be de-commissioned during the course of next year and the remaining roughly 4,500 over the next five years, according to a report in the Helsinki News.
That’s a far bigger reduction than previously announced by Veikkaus, which previously indicated it would reduce the number of dispersed slot machines by approximately 3,000 to 15,500.
Olli Sarekoski, Veikkaus CEO, explained that the state-owned company has sought to maintain its profitability in a situation in which its market share has decreased due to the digitalization and globalization of the gambling market.
“The pressure to maintain our financial performance has been high,” he said. “The price has been that we haven’t been able to reduce gambling problems well enough and we’ve been content with them not increasing.”
Veikkaus Chief Commercial Officer Veera Vähävirta said the company will also streamline its marketing approach, ranging from content and volume to monitoring and practices.
Veikkaus recently dismissed media reports stating that Finnish players are spending as much as €11 billion (US$12.22 billion) on gaming machines, which in turn led to increased concerns about gambling addiction. The betting agency said its turnover for 2018 was far less—€840.3 million.
The company has promised to expedite the introduction of identification technology to its slot machines, saying it intends to install the technology to all dispersed slot machines by January 2021. It also intends to adopt identification as a requirement for all forms of gambling except for scratch cards by 2023.
