10 million fine for Norsk Tipping?
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19 Sep 2025 •
Reading time: 3 minutes Public operator Norsk Tipping has found itself at the centre of a media storm after a spectacular error during a Eurojackpot draw. Nearly 47,000 players received false prize notifications. The affair could cost the company a record fine and calls into question the trust placed in the country’s gambling monopoly.
A technical error with massive consequences
Last June, almost 47,000 Norwegian players mistakenly thought they had hit the jackpot. Norsk Tipping, Norway’s state-owned gambling operator, sent more than 30,000 of them notifications of spectacular winnings. However, this was nothing more than a technical error, linked to a fault in the currency conversion system. Instead of dividing the amounts by 100 when they were converted from Norwegian kroner to euro, the software multiplied them, artificially inflating the sums displayed.
The draw itself had gone off correctly. But the time taken by the operator to identify and correct the fault caused a wave of indignation in the country.
The head of the Norwegian Gaming Authority (NGA), Atle Hamar, did not mince his words when reacting to the affair:
“Players must be able to trust Norsk Tipping, and this is a serious breach of trust. Of course, it must be terrible to receive a message telling you that you’ve won a jackpot, only to find out that it’s not true. This case is damaging trust in Norsk Tipping and has provoked strong reactions.”
This loss of credibility has hit an operator already under close scrutiny. The NGA has already warned that Norsk Tipping could face a fine of up to NOK 10 million. The company has three weeks to present its defence before a final decision is taken.
Structural flaws uncovered
This error is not an isolated case. The regulator has announced an in-depth inspection of the three pillars of Norsk Tipping’s offering: Lotto, Vikinglotto and Eurojackpot. Several recent incidents reveal a worrying lack of control.
These include a four-month outage that prevented iPhone and iPad users from logging out of their accounts, and the erroneous payment of 25 million kroner to a player at the KongKasino online casino. Worse still, persistent errors in the Eurojackpot and Lotto superdraws have for years offered higher winning probabilities to certain organisations, such as gaming clubs and cooperative banks.
“Norsk Tipping exercises insufficient control over its games, and the cases observed reveal a fundamental problem with both the system and the controls. There are serious errors that were only discovered once their consequences had become significant,” denounced the NGA in a press release.
Player trust, a central issue
In a country where gambling is strictly regulated, Norsk Tipping’s reputation is a guarantee of seriousness and fairness. But the accumulation of failures is undermining this image. For the state, which owns the operator, the challenge now is to preserve its eroded credibility.