Veikkaus-Run Fennica Gaming Seizes Loto-Québec Deal To Enter Canada

Fennica Gaming announced its entry into Québec via a partnership with the local gambling distributor on December 10. This is, however, no ordinary game software vendor expanding into new territory. For Fennica Gaming is the B2B arm of Finland’s state run gambling operator, Veikkaus. Veikkaus has held the state-run monopoly on gambling in Finland for nearly a decade now, but that is gradually coming to an end. With the gambling market opening to private operators from 2027, Veikkaus has been moving up, investing heavily in its game software developer branch, Fennica Gaming.

This is one of many new partnerships and expansions that the Helsinki based company has jumped into in the past couple of years. It’s new partner, Loto-Québec, however, holds the monopoly in the Canadian province of Québec, with no end date in sight. That is, legally speaking. But with Alberta set to join Ontario and launch an open gambling market, the rest of Canada – Québec included – will keep a watchful eye on what happens next.

Fennica Gaming Loto-Québec Partnership

Loto Québec has been pursuing new games and content to keep its users engaged. On December 10, Loto Québec partnered with Fennica Gaming, gaining a valuable set of classic slots and casino games. Fennica Gaming announced that its eInstant titles, a smattering of arcade and instant win games, are in the pipeline and will be launched next.

The Helsinki-based company launched its casino games on the Québec gaming site, bringing a new flavour of games to Québecois gamers. Add that to the recent core game systems supplied by Scientific Games, third-party online casino content from Bragg Gaming Group, and the cross-platform jackpots integration supplied by Light & Wonder, and Loto-Québec is on the up and up.

Loto-Québec

The crown corporation, run by the Québec government, is the sole distributor of casino games in Québec. It is responsible for the provincial lotteries, Québec land-based casinos and gaming halls, video lottery terminals, bingo operations, and it has the only legal online casino and sportsbook platform. The latter is provided through the Espacejeux platform, launched in 2010 and includes slots, bingo, online poker, RNG table games and live dealer games. It provides sports betting through the Mise O Jeu platform, an extension of Espacejeux.

Québec has been steadily diversifying its offering, and now through Fennica Gaming it offers more unique titles to add variety for Québec gamers.

What Games Fennica Has to Offer

Fennica Gaming was launched in 2010, and originally, the omnichannel games studio supplied titles exclusively to Veikkaus, the National Lottery of Finland. The provider, run by Veikkaus, operates as a Games as a Service provider. It doesn’t just create titles and sell them, but provides a fully integrated hosting service for online casinos, handling updates, ensuring regulatory compliance, ensuring the quality and performance, and simply handing over the APIs or platform integrations to the casino operators – in this case – Loto-Québec.

Essentially, Fennica has an entire ecosystem of gaming solutions. It has eCasino games, eInstant titles (coming to Québec very soon), multiplayer games, and landbased EGM solutions. With the addition of Canada, Fennica Gaming has now secured a foothold in 17 countries across 3 continents, with a portfolio of over 100 eInstant, multiplayer and eCasino games.

It is highly impressive for a studio that was just launched in 2022. But remember, Fennica Gaming is no indie studio, it has the full backing of Veikkaus, a company that has been around since the 1930s and has held the monopoly in Sweden since 2017. Though that is set to end in 2027, when Finland will deconstruct the state run gambling monopoly.

Fennica’s Other Partnerships and Expansions

Fennica Gaming, and its parent company, Veikkaus, have been aggressively expanding into new territory. Just this year, Veikkaus announced partnerships with Hacksaw Gaming, Blueprint Gaming and Playtech, in what appears to be a bid to strengthen its position. It hasn’t come without controversy, as there have been claims of Veikkaus actively abusing its current monopoly, beefing up its portfolio so that it can dominate the future open market.

The worry here is that through its acquisitions, advertising campaigns and supplier relationships, Veikkaus will be impossible to compete against when Finland’s gambling market is opened up to private operators.

Veikkas is also looking to enhance its international reputation, through the entry into Québec and through various other important expansions. Fennica Gaming obtained vendor licenses in the UAE, Greece and Ontario this year, as it looks to establish itself as a top tier global software provider. Via the Ontario iGaming license, and the partnership with Québec, the up and coming software provider may look South and explore the options of breaking into the USA.

Momentum Builds with Alberta

Backtracking a little to the subject of state run monopolies, Québec is a perfect example of a jurisdiction that is holding strong. The end is nigh for Finland’s gambling monopoly, and with it, the only remaining larger state run monopoly in Europe will be Norway.

In Canada, you get the opposite situation. Ontario opened its gambling market in 2022, and with it, became one of the most competitive iGaming industries in the world. It set the precedent for other Canadian provinces, but none have dared to join. That is, until Alberta.

The Alberta gambling market will open early in 2026. Following the passage of the iGaming Alberta Act, Alberta will open a gambling authority (like iGaming Ontario), Alberta iGaming Corporation, which will have the authority to issue licenses and regulate online gambling platforms. The province previously only had PlayAlberta, which held the legal gambling monopoly, but that will end soon. PlayAlberta will still run, but all the operators in the gray area will now get the chance to obtain licensure and run fully legally in Alberta’s open market.

This will put heavy pressure on the next biggest iGaming markets within Canada. After Ontario, British Columbia and Québec hold the largest iGaming markets, with Alberta and the other provinces falling after those top three. British Columbia and Québec have shown no tangible interest in opening their gambling sectors and legalizing their gray markets, but with Alberta joining Ontario, it will certainly put pressure on both provinces.

Future of State Run Operators and Gambling Monopolies

It is quite an interesting crossover this partnership, with one state related gambling monopoly branching out to game and solution development, whereas the partnering company, Loto-Quebec, is digging deep and holding onto its monopoly. Across Europe, these gambling monopolies are falling one by one, and Norway is really the last big market that is still virtually state run. In Canada, it is quite the opposite, with the majority of provinces holding onto state monopolies through the Atlantic Lotteries Corporation, Play Now (run by BCLC but also operates in Manitoba & Saskatchewan), and Loto-Quebec.

iGaming in the US is still confined to a handful of states, but sports betting, which is more widespread, also has a few similar monopoly-type situations. For instance, New Hampshire or Rhode Island’s single sportsbook market, or the physical constraints in Washington DC on mobile betting (you must be near a retail sportsbook if betting with brands like DraftKings or FanDuel). It is rare, but there are states where bettors have one sole distributor for legally recognized gambling products.

For the operators that do hold monopolies, state-run or otherwise, Veikkaus has shown that there is business to be made outside no-competition gambling markets. Fennica Gaming, only 3 years now in the making, is already rubbing shoulders with big vendors like Scientific Games and Light & Wonder. Continuing this trajectory, and it may even be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Pragmatic Play or Evolution – the biggest titans in the industry.