We cannot gamble away 81 million to the sport in Finnmark

In 2024, sports in Finnmark received a total of NOK 81 million from the profits to Norsk Tipping. Dozens of millions were also distributed to the cultural school bag in the county. In addition, the state distributes a significant proportion of Norsk Tipping's profits to other socially beneficial purposes.

What profits finance?

There is money to build sports facilities, for local activity funds and grassroots in every sports team, money for choirs, corps and theater and for the emergency preparedness of the Red Cross, Norwegian People's Aid and the Rescue Company. The profits also finance the cultural school bag and parts of the work of the Cancer Society, the National Association for Public Health and the Norwegian Outdoor Life – and to infinitely more. This is what we risk losing if the Norwegian gambling model smokes.

This weekend there is a national meeting in the Right. There they will adopt the future policy of the party. In the draft party program, there is a proposal to preserve the Norwegian gambling model. The scheme ensures that Norsk Tipping and Norsk Rikstoto are the only ones who can offer gambling in Norway, and it ensures that the foreign, unregulated companies are not allowed to offer their addictive and irresponsible games in our country.

At the same time, there is a minority dispute from the program committee. Some of Høyre's members want to liberalize today's scheme and allow foreign gaming companies to establish themselves in Norway. We must tell the Right that we support the responsible policy the party has had for years.

We must tell the Right that none of the organizations are working on gambling addiction, who want a change, and we must tell the Right that none of the organizations receive subsidies from Norsk Tipping and Norsk Rikstoto's profits that want change.

Why should they? Why should we in Finnmark sports there? All profits from Norsk Tipping are distributed to socially beneficial purposes in Norway. Nearly NOK 8 billion this year is distributed to sports, culture and humanitarian organizations across the country.

How much profits should the private owners in Malta and Luxembourg take out before they have paid one krone in taxes or fees to society at all?

Responsible gambling

The Norwegian Sports Federation, the Norwegian Red Cross, the Rescue Company, the Blue Cross, the Salvation Army and more than 70 other voluntary organizations have together supported a policy that ensures responsibility in gambling – and in that policy, Norsk Tipping and Norsk Rikstoto's exclusive rights are able to offer money games.

As we have all been able to read in the media lately, there is a coordinated media campaign based on incorrect and airy dealings with numbers, under the auspices of the industry organization for Online Games (NBO) to make the Right scrap the Norwegian gambling model and switch it out with a license scheme that sends the money to private owners and not to socially. Their only interest is to make as much money as possible from gambling as much as possible.

There is nothing wrong with trying to make money. What is wrong is to do so at the expense of gambling addiction, at the expense of responsible games, and at the expense of a solidly excess distribution where 100 per cent of the profits accrue to socially beneficial purposes in Norway.

It is not like NBO at its Secretary General, Carl Fredrik Stenstrøm, says – there will be more money from letting go of the foreign companies. If so, why is none of the profit recipients cheering on Stenstrøm?

Should there be more money from gambling, it had to be played for so much more that it first had to cover today's profits from Norsk Tipping and then create more profits. It's too good to be true, and that's why it's not.

What happens in the future?

We in sports in Finnmark wonder what everyday life our children and grandchildren will meet in the future if Stenstrøm wins? A football field less, a choral in the shortage, even longer queues to be allowed to play handball or basketball? Do we think that the state will easily extend a model – funded over the state budget in competition for other good causes – that ensure predictable framework conditions for voluntary voluntary?

The Sports Federation is Norway's largest children's and youth organization. We care about how we are funded – and we do not want any less responsibility and more gambling addicts. We will maintain a stable and predictable income through the profits from a well -regulated and responsible player as Norsk Tipping.

A license model will most likely increase the number of players with gambling problems – we all know some – and the transfers to culture, sports and humanitarian organizations will be reduced.

The sport in Finnmark and throughout the country needs a continuation of today's gambling model with responsibility as a guiding principle.

Chronicle of Geir Knutsen

Finnmark sports circuit

Sports President

Zaineb al-Samarai