Norway’s gambling regulator, Lottstift, has confirmed a serious error that could potentially mean a significant underestimation of the black market.

Exact scope of damage unclear

Atle Hamar, Director of Lottstift, revealed that the regulator’s anonymous tipping system that allows players to report illegal gambling has been out of commission for over a year.

“The error has been there since March 2024, and was discovered this June,” Hamar said.

This might eventually lead to serious challenges when evaluating the impact of the black market on Norwegian customers.

“We depend on tips from the public, and people should have confidence that the tips they send will reach us. This is a serious error, and it took far too long before we discovered it.”

Whilst the public has other options to communicate with Lottstift when it comes to submitting reports, such as landlines, emails, and contact forms, online tips remain the core instrument when it comes to regulator-player collaboration for taking down illegal websites.

Hamar estimated that hundreds of tips have been wasted within the one-year timeframe when the system remained inactive.

“During the period, the public has tipped us via other channels such as email, contact form and telephone. However, those who have used the tip form have not received a notification that their tip did not arrive.

“We have managed to retrieve 120 tips from the last two months. The rest have been automatically deleted for privacy reasons.

“This means that several hundred tips may be missing for us, but we do not have exact numbers. We will thoroughly review this and make the necessary changes to prevent something similar from happening again.”

While the error has been corrected, this blunder will certainly cast doubt on the accuracy of the regulator’s next black market report.

Norway’s black market

A number of gambling monitoring bodies have continuously warned that the black market in Norway is rapidly gaining leverage over regulated gambling.

In its 2022 European report, the UK’s Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) concluded that a mixture of hard-hitting regulations like in-depth affordability checks, stake limits and advertising bans have all led to the black market accounting for 66% of all money staked in that year alone.

This translates to black market revenues going up by more than three times since 2010, the BGC’s report further added.

A widely circulated argument within international gambling circles is that the monopoly state-owned Norsk Tipping has over gambling services is helping the black market thrive.

Given that Norway will soon become the last monopoly regime in the Nordics after Finland transitions to an open market in the next few years, Norsk Tipping’s future has become a main topic for discussion in everyday political talks.

All aside, over the last few years both the regulator and the government have made noteworthy efforts to push the black market away while curbing problem gambling rates.

In 2024, Lottstift was granted increased powers to issue DNS and IP blocking orders of illegal gambling websites so it can better protect the Norwegian gambling market.

However, the recently discovered error will have rendered these powers largely obsolete, forcing Lottstift to play catch-up with the black market until it breaks even from a year of missed regulatory enforcement.

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