Finland bans MagicPoro, the operator behind Pelikaani and Bigwin, from marketing to Finnish players, with a €1.2m conditional fine

Finland's National Police Board has ordered MagicPoro, the Estonia-licensed company behind the Pelikaani, Pelikioski, Bigwin and Pottila brands, to stop marketing gambling to Finnish players. The order is dated 31 August 2026 and is backed by a conditional fine of €1.2 million. The case became public on 7 October through documents NEXT.io obtained from the police under Finland's Act on the Openness of Government Activities. The board has not published a press release, so every case detail below comes from those documents as NEXT.io reported them.

What the order does

The police concluded that MagicPoro was targeting Finnish consumers in breach of the Lottery Act, which governs gambling in Finland. The order bans the company from marketing gambling to Finland. That means removing marketing that is already out there as well as producing no new material.

It takes effect 30 days after MagicPoro was notified of the decision. The notification date has not been published, so the exact start date is not public. Once in force, the order runs for 12 months, and the board can extend it by up to another year.

According to NEXT.io, this is the first prohibition order the board has issued since Parliament passed Finland's new gambling law in 2025. The board has used the same tools before. In 2023 the board banned BML Group, a Betsson subsidiary, from illegal marketing with a €2.4m conditional fine, and Helsinki's administrative court upheld that order in February 2024.

The €1.2m is a threat, not a bill

A conditional fine (uhkasakko in Finnish) is a threat rather than a penalty: according to NEXT.io, the €1.2m only has to be paid if MagicPoro is ruled to have broken the order. MagicPoro owes nothing today.

The payment block

When the ban takes effect, MagicPoro goes on the board's payment blocking list. Finnish banks and payment providers will then have to stop processing payments to its gambling sites. The police say the block targets money players send to companies that have received a marketing ban.

How the case built up

The investigation began in autumn 2025 and covered Pelikaani, Pelikioski and Bigwin. The board asked MagicPoro for clarification on 4 November and heard nothing by the December deadline. In April the company replied that it had only received the requests in March. It said its websites were not aimed at any one country and that it had told affiliates to stop using Finnish-language content. MagicPoro told the police: "For more international affiliate sites, the requirement has been to edit the content to be completely country neutral."

The police were not persuaded. In August they found significant marketing still live, including two Pelikioski campaigns on the clipping platform Viralify. In clipping campaigns, a brand pays creators to post short videos. One campaign had 27 creators and about 96,500 views. By then the board had also linked a fourth site, Pottila, to MagicPoro.

The board also warned MagicPoro that a prohibition order could affect any licence application it makes under Finland's new licensing system. MagicPoro had no comment for NEXT.io, and it is not known whether the company has appealed.

Why it matters

The order shows the tools the police are using against offshore brands ahead of Finland's new licensing system: a marketing ban, a payment block and a warning about future licensing. The warning may matter most. A company that wants a Finnish licence now has a reason to stop marketing to Finland before it applies. For players, Pelikaani, Pelikioski, Bigwin and Pottila operate on an Estonian licence, not a Finnish one, and once the block applies, Finnish banks are meant to stop payments to them.

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