Norway will hold a once-in-a-lifetime lottery to settle a year-long dispute between the state operator and a group of nearly 17,000 customers.
As reported by local media outlet VG, state-owned Norsk Tipping will hold a lottery exclusively for the 16,698 Norwegians affected by a 2025 Super Draw error.
The error saw the group of 16,698 wrongly omitted from the prize draw. This in turn made the 52 winners of the draw invalid, despite them believing they had won millions of Krona in prizes.
The multi-thousand-person-strong group was being represented by SANDS, a prominent Norwegian law firm, according to VG.
A court date of 24 August 2026 was scheduled to hear the dispute between the group and Norsk Tipping, but this will no longer take place.
Instead, Norsk Tipping will host a private, free-to-enter draw for the nearly 17,000 customers.
This brings an end to a dispute which has haunted Norsk Tipping for over a year, but unfortunately for the company it will likely not bring an end to public discussions about the suitability of the monopoly it holds.
The error led to the company being fined NOK 25m (£2m) by Lottstift, Norway’s gambling regulator, in September 2025. The regulator’s Department Director, Tore Bell, described the conduct of the April draw as “grossly negligent”.
This was not the only technical mistake, nor fine, that Norsk Tipping was hit with in 2025.
The company was charged NOK 10m for an error in a June Eurojackpot draw that resulted in 47,000 lotto winners incorrectly being told that they had won prizes larger than the ones they had actually won.
A subsequent regulatory audit of Norsk Tipping’s operations, conducted by Lottstift in late 2025, led to the regulator fining the company NOK 1m in February 2026 due to anti-money laundering deficiencies.
All in all, it’s been a tough year for the company. All of this has come amid continuing political scrutiny of the Norwegian monopoly system, one of the last left in Europe with Finland and Austria moving away from their respective state gambling models.