The Best Betting Sites in Finland for 2023

Pesäpallo

The sport of pesäpallo is viewed by many as the national sport of Finland, and an increasing number of betting sites are now offering odds on this niche sport. Finnish athlete Lauri Pihkala invented pesäpallo in the 1920s after he had visited a baseball game in the USA. It is like baseball in many regards, as the premise of the game involves hitting a ball and navigating through four bases.

The fundamental difference between pesäpallo and baseball is that the ball is pitched vertically, and the thrower is situated close to the opposite team member trying to strike. Domestically, the top tier of competition is the Superpesis, which comprises 14 teams in the men’s league and 12 in the women’s league. The Pesäpallo World Cup was first played in 1992, and Finland has claimed gold in every single category each tournament – the men’s, women’s and mixed teams.

Ice Hockey

Although football is the most popular sport in Finland in terms of hobbies, it falls behind ice hockey for viewership on TV. While the men’s national team has yet to win gold at the Winter Olympics, they have won two silver and four bronze medals to date. The men’s team is one of the ‘Big Six’ – a term that describes the six most successful national teams in ice hockey.

Liiga, or Finnish Elite League, is the top professional ice hockey league in Finland. There have been many changes to the league’s promotion and relegation system over the years. Since the 2016-17 season, 15 teams compete for the title. Teams such as Kärpät, Tappara and HPK have become Finnish Champions in recent years, and the best Finnish betting sites allow you to bet on every fixture.

Football

As the league’s name suggests, national betting agency Veikkaus sponsors the Veikkausliiga, the premier division of Finnish football. The Veikkausliiga comprises 12 teams, including HJK and KuPS, and operates a system of promotion and relegation with the Ykkönen. The best football betting sites offer odds on the Veikkausliiga and Ykkönen, the Finnish Cup, and every other football competition you can think of.

Jari Litmanen is widely considered to be Finland’s greatest football player of all time. The attacking midfielder represented local teams like Reipas, HJK and MyPA before moving to Ajax and winning the Champions League. Litmanen experienced tough seasons at Barcelona and Liverpool before returning to Ajax. He scored 32 goals in 137 appearances for the men’s national team between 1989 and 2010.

Winter Sports

Finnish people also enjoy betting on winter sports. With over 100 ski resorts and the skiing season lasting over 200 days per year, Finland is home to winter sports legends such as Eero Mäntyranta and Juha Mieto. Finnish athletes have won over 160 medals at the Winter Games. Most of these medals have been won in cross country skiing, ski jumping and speed skating events.

You can bet on all your favourite winter sports athletes at our recommended Finnish betting sites. These sites offer highly competitive odds on major events like the Winter Games, Alpine World Ski Championships, and the Winter X Games. Besides the winter sports mentioned above, you can bet on Nordic combined events, freestyle skiing, figure skating, biathlon, snowboarding, curling, and more.

The Formation of RAY

Despite this well-intentioned move, there was pandemonium and just a few years later in 1938, Rahaautomaattiyhdisty (RAY) was set up. RAY served as Finland’s slot machine association and not only did they regulate the slot machines, but they also started manufacturing them. Money was put aside to deal with any adverse social situations that arose out of problem gambling on the machines – evidence of Finland’s socialist character.

While RAY covers the slot machine aspect of gambling, of course, there are other avenues that players can go down to strike a bet. Fintoto was the horse racing pari-mutuel betting organisation. Besides regulating the industry, they repatriate funds into it, funding racehorse welfare and much more.

Veikkaus is the Finnish lottery, which also covers sports betting services. Again, they are essentially a non-profit, reinvesting profits into the arts, culture and sports.

The Role of PAF

In Finland, there are several thousand islands located in the Baltic Sea. They are regulated by another organisation – Play Among Friends (PAF) – bringing all the different organisations on the islands under one jurisdiction. The explosion of the internet and the subsequent rise of online gambling caused some issue between the three regulatory bodies operating on the mainland and the PAF.

Why? Because PAF could now operate on the internet and they started accepting and advertising to customers living on the mainland. As a result, the 2002 Finnish Act on Gaming was introduced to make the murky water a little clearer. The government granted RAY a monopoly over online gambling on the mainland, but they stopped short of making using PAF illegal.

Pressure from the EU

Essentially, the Finnish government runs a monopoly on gambling. Being part of the EU, this didn’t sit well with lawmakers in Brussels, and in 2010, the European Commission made a request for Finland to adjust their regulations to make the gambling industry in the country more of a free market. Despite pressure from the EU, Finland has kept things as they were.

In 2015, Finland’s Ministerial Committee on Economic Policy approved a merger of the three state-owned gambling operators: Veikkaus, Fintoto and Rahaautomaattiyhdisty (RAY). The new Veikkaus began operating at the beginning of 2017 and boasts of generating over one billion euros a year, benefitting Finnish society by distributing revenue to beneficiaries in fields such as sports and science.