Estonia’s gambling self-exclusion list grows to nearly 21,000

The number of people who have restricted their own access to gambling in Estonia has risen steadily in recent years, reaching 20,999, ERR reported. The Ministry of Finance plans to review the Gambling Act next year, including the rules for compiling the self-exclusion list.

The state collected 61 million euros in gambling tax last year.

According to the Tax and Customs Board, 20,999 people have currently placed restrictions on their own gambling. The number has increased continuously over the past three years, from 17,203 people in 2023.

A person can have restrictions covering several types of gambling. A total of 20,628 people have restricted their access to games of chance, 9,767 have restricted sports betting and 5,968 have restricted lotteries. The number of people who have restricted sports betting has increased by 348 since the start of the year.

People are added to the list indefinitely on the basis of a written application. The application also specifies the period after which they may submit a new request to be removed from the list. That period must be at least six months and no longer than three years, said Jekaterina Nikitina, head of the excise duties department at the Tax and Customs Board.

“In our assessment, the fact that the number of people who have set restrictions for themselves has increased over the years shows that people are increasingly aware of the player protection mechanisms available to them. These mechanisms work very well, otherwise players would not have used them,” Nikitina said.

Under the Gambling Act, gambling operators must introduce measures to ensure that people on the list cannot gamble in the categories they have restricted themselves from playing.

Rainer Osanik, head of the financial information policy department at the Ministry of Finance, said there had been only isolated cases of companies failing to meet the requirement.

“Gambling operators comply with this requirement quite carefully. If a person is on the list and the operator allows them to gamble, the operator must reimburse the person for the money they lost. Conversely, if the person wins, they must return the winnings,” Osanik said.

The Ministry of Finance plans to review the Gambling Act next year, including the conditions for compiling the self-exclusion list. Osanik said one problem was that people with gambling addictions often did not want to add themselves to the list.

“No one else can currently add them to the list, but family members of people with gambling addictions often suffer as well. The system should allow a person to be added to the list on certain additional grounds, either at the initiative of a family member or by court order. Estonian law does not currently allow this. We are now analysing how it could be made possible,” Osanik said.