ComeOn Group and SuomiVeto have been granted licences to offer online casino and sports betting in Finland, bringing to four the number of operators that have publicly confirmed approval ahead of the market’s opening on 1 July 2027.

The two join Wildz Group and Hippos ATG on the list of companies cleared by the Finnish National Police Board under the new Gambling Act, which ends Veikkaus’s monopoly on online casino and sports betting. The Police Board has been processing applications since the window opened on 2 March 2026, and had received 41 by late May.

ComeOn secures full set

European Entertainment Group (EEG), ComeOn’s parent, said in a statement on 22 October that its subsidiary had received all the licences it applied for. ComeOn filed on 2 March, the first day applications were accepted. EEG also owns supplier Yggdrasil, virtual sports provider Highlight Games and affiliate Game Lounge.

“Finland is a market where we look forward to serving Finnish customers in a fully regulated environment from July 2027,” said EEG chief executive Itai Frieberger. Chief financial officer Raffaele Amodio added: “Finland is a core part of our growth strategy.” The company said it would give further detail on its Finnish preparations in its regular financial reporting.

SuomiVeto’s BetCity playbook

SuomiVeto is a Helsinki-based start-up led by the founders of Dutch operator BetCity, which was sold to Entain. Chief executive and co-founder Melvin Bostelaar said the licence was “the beginning of an exciting new chapter”, while co-founder Joey Singels said the company was not set up “just to enter the market, but to become one of its leading gaming brands”.

The founders are repeating the partner line-up they used at BetCity. SuomiVeto signed a turnkey sportsbook deal with Kambi in February and is also working with Bragg Gaming. A Finnish-first local brand with a proven exit model behind it is a different proposition from the established Nordic and Maltese groups expected to dominate the early licence list.

A crowded start

Wildz Group was the first to announce approval earlier this month, claiming the first Finnish online gambling licence. Hippos ATG, the horseracing betting operator, has also confirmed approval, according to Gaming Intelligence’s tally.

More announcements are expected as the Police Board works through the remaining applications. Licensed operations cannot begin until 1 July 2027, when supervision passes to the new Finnish Permit and Supervision Agency. In the meantime the authorities are tightening the screws on unlicensed operators, with Finnish police already stepping up fines for illegal gambling marketing.

For licensees, the eight months before launch are about building local brands and payment set-ups in a market that has never had legal private competition. How many of the 41 applicants get through, and how quickly, will determine how crowded the Finnish market is from day one.

Evoke, the owner of William Hill, 888 and Mr Green, reported a 7% fall in third-quarter revenue to £406m, blaming the closure of around 270 UK betting shops over the past year and calling on the government to hold off on further tax rises in this week’s Budget.

Excluding the closed shops and at constant exchange rates, revenue for the three months to 30 September fell 2%, the company said in its trading update on 23 October. Customer-friendly sports results at the start of the football season took 1 to 2 percentage points off growth, leaving underlying revenue broadly stable on a normalised basis.

Tax and the shop estate

Chief executive Per Widerström linked the closures directly to the tax changes announced last year. “The closure of 270 shops over the past year shows the real impact on jobs and livelihoods from higher industry taxation,” he said, adding that “on an underlying basis the business continues to show resilience”.

Remote Gaming Duty rose from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026, and a new 25% rate for remote betting takes effect on 1 April 2027, with remote bets on UK horseracing kept at 15%. Evoke has estimated the changes will add £125m to £135m a year to its duty bill once fully in force. It expects to offset about half of that through supplier savings, lower marketing spend, shop closures and operating cost cuts.

Evoke had said in March that it would permanently close about 200 UK shops, roughly 15% of its retail estate, starting in May. The number has since risen. At the half-year stage in August, group revenue was flat at £887.5m and up 2% like-for-like.

Budget pressure

The update came days before the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget on 28 October, and Widerström used it to lobby against another round of increases. “We urge the UK government to carefully consider any further increases,” he said.

The industry fears the Budget will target land-based gaming machines next. A group of 90 Labour MPs has pressed the Chancellor to double Machine Games Duty on Category B machines, a move Betfred’s founder has warned would end the high street betting shop. The machines are a core revenue line for the retail estates of Evoke, Entain and Betfred.

Evoke is not the only operator cutting back. Flutter said last week that it would cut up to 1,400 UK and Ireland jobs as it absorbs the higher duty rate.

Bally’s Intralot deal on track

Evoke said its takeover by Bally’s Intralot remains on course to complete at the end of the fourth quarter of 2026 or the start of the first quarter of 2027. Shareholders of both companies have approved the deal, which offers 0.537 new Bally’s Intralot shares for each Evoke share and valued Evoke at about £243.1m when it was agreed. Bally’s Intralot has lined up around £889m of financing to fund the deal and refinance Evoke’s debt, which stood at about £1.86bn at the end of 2025.

The update gave no profit or cash figures. With the deal close to completion, how the Budget treats betting shops and machines will shape the retail estate Bally’s Intralot inherits.

IG Group will launch financial prediction markets for professional clients in the UK before the end of 2026 and has applied for a UK gambling licence so it can add sports, politics and entertainment markets early next year, the London-listed trading company said at its capital markets event on Thursday.

In a statement to the London Stock Exchange, IG said financial prediction markets will launch in Q4 2026 for UK professional clients, with the wider product set to follow in early 2027. The application for a gambling licence has been made by its IG Consumer subsidiary.

The plan makes IG one of the first established UK financial firms to bring exchange-style event contracts to the domestic market, where prediction markets of the kind offered by Kalshi and Polymarket in the US have no dedicated regulatory category. Products tied to sports and other non-financial outcomes would fall under the Gambling Commission’s remit, which explains the licence application.

Underdog deal on track

IG also said its acquisition of Underdog, the US daily fantasy sports and prediction markets operator, remains on track to complete in late 2026 or early 2027. The deal, announced on 30 July, is worth up to about $1.3 billion, made up of an upfront enterprise value of around $1.1 billion and an earnout of about $200 million. IG will pay the upfront consideration in a mix of new shares and cash and repay Underdog’s debt on completion, and it paused its share buyback to protect its investment-grade credit rating.

Underdog added prediction markets in September 2025 and, at the time of the announcement, was the third-largest US prediction market exchange by trading volume behind Kalshi and Robinhood. Crucially for IG, it holds a full stack of federal licences, including a designated contract market, a derivatives clearing organisation and a futures commission merchant. Underdog will continue to run as a standalone business under its own management. It is currently suing Tennessee over a cease-and-desist order targeting its sports event contracts, one of several state fights facing the sector.

Guidance and targets

For 2026, IG guided to mid-single-digit growth in total revenue and an EBITDA margin in the low 40s, excluding around £30 million of redomicile and restructuring costs and expenses related to Underdog. Over the medium term, excluding Underdog, it is targeting organic revenue growth of more than 10% a year from a 2025 base of about £1.1 billion, with an EBITDA margin in the mid-40s.

The company said Underdog should lift the combined group’s medium-term revenue growth above IG’s standalone rate, though the pro forma EBITDA margin would initially be lower and rise as the US business scales.

The UK rollout follows the same sequence IG has described for the wider business: start with financial event contracts, where it already holds regulatory permissions and serves an established base of active traders, then extend into sports and other outcomes once licensing allows. Limiting the first phase to professional clients also keeps the launch away from the retail protections that apply to most UK leveraged trading products while the model is tested.

“Trading, investing and entertainment are converging, and IG is well placed to capitalise on the opportunity,” chief executive Breon Corcoran said.

What it means for UK operators

A licensed prediction markets product from a listed UK trading firm would give the UK betting industry its first domestic test of how event contracts sit alongside fixed-odds sportsbooks and betting exchanges. In the US, sportsbook operators including DraftKings and FanDuel have launched their own prediction products in response to the growth of Kalshi and Polymarket. UK operators already facing higher remote gaming duty will be watching whether IG’s sports markets, once licensed, are treated as betting for tax and conduct purposes, and how the Gambling Commission frames the licence it grants.