Lottery administrator in Norway faces scrutiny over Eurojackpot mistake
Norsk Tipping, Norway's state-owned gambling operator, has been under intense scrutiny due to a string of legal violations and regulatory penalties, primarily in its Eurojackpot operations and related activities. The operator has faced significant fines totalling millions of Norwegian Krone, signalling severe regulatory censure and financial consequences.
The most recent events leading up to July 2025 saw Norsk Tipping subjected to intensified regulatory scrutiny following significant legal breaches tied to its Eurojackpot offerings. These violations resulted in fines amounting to approximately €3.9 million (around tens of millions in NOK), reflecting the scale of non-compliance.
A recent breach of the Gambling Act by Norsk Tipping, confirmed on July 11, 2025, allowed third-party software to prematurely check players' tickets, resulting in many players receiving a 'Ticket Not a Winner' message even when they had won a prize. This led to unclaimed prizes and left many players disgruntled, as some had made significant plans based on the inflated winnings.
Atle Hamar, director of the Norwegian Gambling and Foundation Authority, labelled the error a "serious and clear violation of the law." The inflated payout notifications were a result of a fault in a code converting prize sums to Norwegian kroner, leading to 30,000 individuals receiving notifications of a payout 100 times their actual winnings.
In response, the Norwegian Gambling Authority is initiating a full probe into Norsk Tipping's biggest lottery games, which include Lotto, the Eurojackpot, and Vikinglotto. The regulator discovered that players in cooperatives, cooperative banks, and gaming clubs were more likely to win these extra draws and super draws.
The watchdog will conduct a thorough review of the full processes of Norsk Tipping's games, from players' submission deadlines to winning payouts. The acting CEO of Norsk Tipping, Vegar Strand, stated that the company believes the error to be "very serious."
Norsk Tipping has initiated thorough reviews, with external expertise, of the error situations they have had. The CEO of Norsk Tipping, Tonje Sagstuen, resigned in the wake of the scandal. The Irish Office of the Regulator of the National Lottery (ORNL) fined Premier Lotteries Ireland EUR 23,000 for breaching its licensing terms in 2021, offering a stark reminder of the importance of compliance in the gambling industry.
The UK Gambling Commission fined Camelot UK GBP 3.15 million over three failures linked to its mobile app in 2022, including over 20,000 players being wrongly informed that they were not winners between 2016 and 2020. Senior adviser at the gambling authority, Anya Therese Markhus, said, "People should be able to trust their games. The fact that several thousand players receive a notice of excessive winnings is clearly harmful to trust."
The Norwegian Gambling and Foundation Authority levied a NOK 4.5 million (GBP 329,000) penalty against Norsk Tipping in September 2024 for a payment error in the KongKasino game. The growing enforcement intensity denotes the Norwegian regulators' resolve to uphold gambling laws rigorously and hold operators accountable for breaches. The ongoing compliance challenges for Norsk Tipping in the highly regulated Norwegian gambling sector underscore the importance of adhering to strict gambling laws designed to ensure safe, fair, and legal betting environments.
The most recent scrutiny of Norsk Tipping, Norway's state-owned gambling operator, led to a revelation on July 11, 2025, about a casino-and-gambling violation concerning third-party software check of players' tickets in their Eurojackpot offerings, leading to unclaimed prizes. The Norwegian Gambling and Foundation Authority is currently conducting a comprehensive review of Norsk Tipping's games, including Lotto, Eurojackpot, and Vikinglotto, in light of this breach and the growing number of compliance challenges faced by the operator.
