Wildz Says It Has Won Finland's First Gambling Licence, Valid From July 2027

Malta-based Wildz Group says Finland's National Police Board has granted it a five-year gambling licence starting on 1 July 2027, the first award any operator has announced under the new regime. The board has not confirmed it, and a year ago it was weighing a marketing prohibition against the same group that would have ruled it out.

• Wildz Group says Finland's National Police Board has granted it a licence to offer gambling to Finnish players for five years from 1 July 2027, making it the first operator to announce an award under the new system
• The board has not publicly confirmed the award, and the company has not said which game types the licence covers
• Five years is the maximum term the Gambling Act (10/2026) allows for a gambling licence, and licensed play cannot start before the Act takes full effect on 1 July 2027
• The board had 75 applications and had decided none on 22 September, against a stated processing time of six to eight months
• In 2025 the board told the group, then called Rootz, that it was considering a marketing prohibition; under the Act, such a prohibition issued after 1 September 2024 bars an applicant for two years

Wildz Announces an Award the Regulator Has Not Yet Published

Wildz Group, a Malta-based online casino operator, said on 15 October that Finland's National Police Board (Poliisihallitus), which runs the Lottery Administration, has granted it a licence to offer gambling services to players in mainland Finland for five years from 1 July 2027, according to NEXT.io. It is the first operator to say publicly that it has received a licence under the new system, which ends the monopoly of Veikkaus on betting and online casino.

Chief executive Sam Brown told NEXT.io that "being the first operator to receive a licence in Finland is a welcome reward for all the efforts of the team in the application process", and said the group was "looking forward to July 2027". A spokesperson told iGaming Business (iGB) that the group would work with the regulator "to achieve the highest possible level of channelisation", and board member Lasse Rantala said on LinkedIn that the licence takes effect on 1 July 2027, according to iGB.

The award rests on the company's statement. iGB reported that the regulator had not publicly confirmed Wildz's licence or any other outcome, and it is not clear whether other licences have been granted without being announced. We could not check the Police Board's own pages, which refused automated access on 15 October. Wildz has not published a licence number or said which game types the licence covers. Its brands are mainly casinos, but it also runs a sportsbook, Wildz Sports, according to NEXT.io.

What the Gambling Act Says About the Licence

The five-year term is the ceiling. Section 14 of the Gambling Act (10/2026) says a gambling licence (rahapelitoimilupa) is granted for at most five years at a time, and for less only if the applicant asks or the activity is short-lived. Section 6 lists the six game types a licence can cover: fixed-odds betting, variable-odds betting, virtual betting, online casino games, online money bingo and online slot machine games. Each licence must state which of them it allows.

Only the licensing provisions took effect on 1 March 2026, when applications opened. The rest, including the duty in section 59 to keep a public, machine-readable list of licence holders, applies from 1 July 2027. Until 30 June 2027 the Police Board is the competent authority; from 1 July the Lupa- ja valvontavirasto, the new Finnish Supervisory Agency, licenses and supervises the market and takes over the board's registers. Licensees will pay lottery tax of 22% of their gaming margin from that date, according to the Finnish Tax Administration.

When we last counted, on 22 September, the board had received 75 applications and had decided none, with processing put at six to eight months, after 50 in June. The Act also bars the holder of the exclusive licence, in practice Veikkaus, from holding a competitive one, so any competitive offer from the incumbent has to come from a separate group company.

The Group Was Under Investigation a Year Ago

In October 2025 NEXT.io, citing documents first reported by the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti, reported that the board had asked the group, then called Rootz, in July 2025 to stop marketing Wildz to Finnish consumers, pointing to Instagram posts by former alpine skiing champion Kalle Palander, who has said he does not understand why he is linked to the case, promotions on Finnish-language sports sites and an offer to refund voided bets on an interrupted Finland-Poland World Cup qualifier. A board spokesperson told NEXT.io the board was considering a prohibition reinforced by a conditional fine "should Rootz fail to cease its marketing targeted at mainland Finland". The company rejected the board's conclusion but said it would tell affiliates to remove Wildz content and strip Finland-specific elements from its sites, and Brown said it had complied fully with all requests. No prohibition against the group has been reported since.

The Licence Is Also a Verdict on the 2025 Case

That history is the most consequential part of the announcement. Section 10 of the Act says an applicant cannot be considered reliable if, within two years of the assessment and after 1 September 2024, it received a prohibition or penalty for marketing contrary to the Lotteries Act, and the test reaches board members, executives and 25% shareholders. The board's choice in 2025 between a warning and a prohibition was therefore, in effect, a licensing decision, and if Wildz is licensed it stopped at the warning. That draws the line between operators the board warned and the parties it prohibited and fined this year. The reading depends on the award being confirmed, but it tells the rest of the queue, most of it foreign according to the board, that having been warned over marketing to Finland is not in itself fatal, provided the marketing stopped when the board asked.

Being First Matters Less Than It Sounds

The award gives Wildz no head start in the market. Nobody can offer licensed gambling in Finland before 1 July 2027, and the licence runs from that date, so on Wildz's account it expires in mid-2032. What it does give the group is more than eight months to plan payments, platforms and marketing within the Act's closed list of permitted channels, while applicants still in the queue wait on a review the board says takes six to eight months. Since there is no cap on licences, the commercial edge lasts only until the next awards. The real test is whether the board publishes its decisions before July, so that banks, media partners and players can tell licensed brands from unlicensed ones.

Wildz has announced what the regulator has not, and its own enforcement history makes the award more telling than its timing. Until the Police Board or its successor publishes the list, Finland's first licence is a company statement.