The Norwegian regulator Norsk Tipping has cut the amount that players are able to lose each month on ‘high risk’ online games to 5,000 NOK – approximately £420.
It’s the second time in less than a year that Norsk Tipping has introduced a reduced loss limit, with a rule change in December 2020 seeing the limit drop from 10,000 NOK to 7,500 NOK. Therefore, high stakes Norwegian players have experienced a real-term decrease of 50% in their play.
A number of their games, including Kong Kasino, Flax and Bingoria, fall under the remit of the limit, with Norsk Tipping claiming that total losses will fall by between 150-175 million NOK every year.
The regulator details the comprehensive nature of their approach to loss limitation amongst its most vulnerable players.
“Norsk Tipping has defined a global limit that restricts the amount of money you can lose playing our games during the course of a day or month,” they reveal on their website. “The global limit includes all registered gaming with Norsk Tipping, regardless of whether you play online or at a sales agent.
“Some games have features that provide a higher risk to players of developing problems than others. If you want to play these types of games with Norsk Tipping, you first have to set a gaming limit.”
And Bjorn Helge Hoffmann, the head of responsible gaming, at Norsk Tipping, is adamant that their approach is the right one.
“We have seen a clear effect after we adjusted the limit in December, in that the proportion of high-risk players has fallen over a longer period of time,” he said.
“Nevertheless, we see that there is still a group of core players who lose a lot. Therefore, we want to see if a lower limit can affect these in a positive direction.”
Knowing Your Limits
Norway isn’t the only Scandinavian country to introduce stringent loss limits on daily, weekly and monthly online casino gaming.
Sweden and Denmark have their own unique rules that limit how much a player can lose each month, and their Nordic neighbour Finland has introduced a daily loss restriction of €500 and €2,000 in a month when playing ‘fast paced’ casino games like slots and instant win titles.
In the UK, the Gambling Commission has so far resisted the urge to introduce mandatory loss limits – although players are able to set their own controls with many online casinos and gambling sites.
However, there are restrictions that are fairly unique to the UK market, and those include the slowing down of slots so that players have more time in-between spins – 2.5 seconds, to be precise, is how long gamers have to wait between turns.
Any tools designed to speed up gaming, such as ‘auto play’, have also been outlawed, with the idea that such tools can lead to a loss of control.
The UK regulator followed the lead of Greece on that, who in August 2020 decided to implement a three-second lock between spins on their online slots as part of their Gambling Reform Act.