Finnish Government Launches Online Poker Room
Raha-automaattiyhdistys (RAY) is a gambling company owned by the government in Finland. They have monopoly on slot machines and other casino games that are put out in night clubs in Finland. RAY also own and run the casino in Helsinki. They are now also planning to launch a Finnish online poker room to attract all the Finnish poker players to their brand.
RAY was founded in 1938 and they are the only gambling company who are licensed to run gambling operations in Finland. If a night club owner wants to open up a roulette table in their club they will need to go through RAY who will put the table in place and use their own employers to run it. They also offer slot machines to the night clubs and cut them in on a bit of the profit for being allowed to place them in the night clubs. The profit from these machines goes to charitable causes and some of the money is used to get help for problem gamblers.
The Finnish minister of culture and sports, Staffan Wallin, announced that RAY is going to launch their own online poker room within short. All the technical preparations have been made and they expect to be able to launch before the end of the year. The government of Finland will need to change the current law a bit before they are able to be able to fully launch and accept players.
Finland have around 120.000 online poker players so there is definitely a market for a new poker room but it will also be very hard to try to get customers since not many new poker rooms have had a lot of success after the poker boom 5 years ago. It will obviously be very hard for them to compete with poker rooms like PokerStars and FullTilt Poker.
Tags: Finland, Online Poker, RAY