This Country Banned Lottery Stores From TALKING About Their Games

Talking about the lottery is now outlawed in Finland lottery stores. Photo: Yle

Aggressive marketing techniques in Finland for the lottery are not welcome.

In fact, Finnish police have presssured the national lottery agency Veikkaus to stop shop staff telling customers about their lottery.

Shoppers in Finland will no longer be verbally invited to purchase lottery tickets by staff working at point of sale stations.

Over 70% of the Finnish population of about 5 million play Veikkaus Lotto regularly.

Police top brass say the practice constitutes aggressive marketing. They have persuaded Veikkaus to put an end to it.

The revised guidelines followed an intervention by senior police officials into what they saw as the aggressive marketing tactics by lottery sellers.

In June 2015, Veikkaus had already received a marketing ban related to its oral point of sale marketing tactics.

The organisation subsequently moved to limit this form of promotion in its sales channels. However police officials say Veikkaus didn’t do enough to curb the practice and the marketing sanction was extended.

ABOUT FINLAND LOTTO:Veikkaus Oy is the Finnish national betting agency and is fully owned by the Finnish government. Veikkaus organises 20 different games, the most popular being the Finnish national lottery where you choose 7 lucky numbers from a range of numbers from 1 to 39 (7/49).

It generates more than a third of the company's total sales. Other important games are Football pools and Fixed Odds Betting (forms of sports betting), and the Ässä scratch tickets.