Norsk Tipping, the national lottery operator of Norway, has been warned with a NOK 46m (£3.3m) fine over long-standing errors.
The existence of an issue which affected draws for millions of players since 2021 was confirmed by the operator itself, who said that the problem could potentially span further back in time.
Atle Hamar, Director of Norway’s gambling regulator Lottsift, commented: “That means that the error has affected millions of players. There have been wrong winners in every single draw over several years.”
Norsk Tipping was supposedly first tipped about a system error with the Eurojackpot draws in November last year, but made no further investigations, the gambling authority said.
Another tip off followed on 24 January, but two more draws were carried out before an official investigation was conducted. Concurrent Eurojackpot players amounted to around 1.5 million in 2024 alone. “This is grave and careless,” Hamar added.
“The error is serious and a clear violation of the law. Players should be able to trust that Norsk Tipping’s games are safe and fair.
“With the market position they have, one would expect such errors to be discovered and corrected immediately, but they have not had good enough systems for that.”
An official warning has now been issued by the regulator to Norsk Tipping, threatening it with a NOK 46m fine, or 0.45% of the latest Norsk Tipping turnover, if the operator doesn’t provide evidence of proactive actions to mitigate the errors.
“It is a mitigating factor that Norsk Tipping generally has a strong focus on safe gambling. This is still a serious matter that has affected millions of players and a significant violation of the law,” Hamar added.
Lottsift also reminded that this is the third serious violation of Norsk Tipping within the span of less than a year.
The operator was previously fined NOK 4.5m after mistakenly paying out a NOK 25m win to a customer – an amount way above the maximum allowed single payout of NOK 5m. An appeal followed, which is yet to be decided on.
Another error saw Norsk Tipping accidentally preventing players from self-excluding, which cost it NOK 36m in fines.
“Norsk Tipping must have better control over the games they offer, and must prepare for us to tighten control. This is to prevent more errors, and we see that it is absolutely necessary to put them in place,” Hamer concluded.