The vice president of the European Casino Association, Tiina Siltanen, highlights the role it plays in the fight against illegal gaming and reveals its plans for 2026.
2025, which is now coming to an end, it was an year marked by the launch of important international collaborations for the European Casino Association.
How will the collaboration with the American Gaming Association and the Betting Gaming Council develop in 2026?
We asked to Tiina Siltanen, senior vice president of the association representing European casinos, as well as vice president of the Finnish Casino Veikkaus.
“2025 was indeed a landmark year for international cooperation. The memorandum of understanding we signed with the American Gaming Association and the Betting and Gaming Council has already begun yielding tangible results. Our joint roundtable at the Iaga Conference in Berlin this past June demonstrated the power of cross-continental collaboration in addressing what is fundamentally a borderless challenge.
Looking ahead to 2026, we will deepen these partnerships through several initiatives. Firstly, we are establishing regular knowledge-sharing forums between our organizations to exchange best practices on any topic that is important at the time, be it Aml, safer gambling, Cybersecurity and of course illegal gambling. The illegal gambling market respects no borders—operators based anywhere can target consumers everywhere—so our response must be equally coordinated.
Secondly, we are prioritizing the discussion on joint research programs to better understand the scale and methods of illegal operators. The recent studies reveal that illegal gambling is a global ecosystem that requires intelligence-sharing across jurisdictions. When the Aga, Bgc, and Eca speak with one voice, we send a powerful message to policymakers: the legal, regulated gaming industry stands united in protecting consumers and maintaining market integrity.”
What challenges can and must European casinos address together?
“The most pressing challenge we face is the illegal gambling epidemic. Only by effectively addressing the illegal and unlicensed market can we ensure that gambling is channeled to licensed operators and secure environment, where it belongs. With over 6.200 unlicensed sites targeting European consumers and generating more than €80 billion in gross gaming revenue — more than double what regulated operators earn —we are witnessing an unprecedented assault on both consumer protection and national tax bases.
Where we must work together is in enforcement. The Eca firmly believes that each member state must retain full sovereignty over its gambling sector, defining regulations and consumer protections according to national priorities and market conditions. This principle of subsidiarity is essential—what works in Finland may not work in France, and national regulators understand their markets and their citizens better than centralized policymakers can.
However, what we cannot tolerate is the exploitation of this national autonomy by illegal operators. We must collectively demand strict enforcement of the rules that prohibit cross-border gambling. Illegal sites operate precisely because they exploit the gaps between national jurisdictions, offering their services across borders whilst evading every regulator’s authority. Our shared challenge is to ensure that enforcement mechanisms work seamlessly across borders — that an operator illegal in one country cannot simply relocate its servers and continue targeting players in another.
The Eca’s mission for 2026 is twofold: to support each member state in maintaining robust national regulation tailored to their specific context, and to ensure that our international collaboration with the Aga and Bgc strengthens the enforcement tools available to national regulators. We oppose any move towards centralized Eu gambling regulation, but we absolutely demand coordinated action against illegal operators who disrespect national boundaries.
Our strength lies not in harmonization, but in solidarity – united in protecting national consumers and national industries through rigorous, nationally-tailored regulation and coordinated cross-border enforcement.”
2025 saw the complete closure of Swedish casinos due to lack of profitability. Should this be a wake-up call for the entire casino industry, or is this a national issue?
“It’s both yes and no. Sweden is in many ways a unique national case, but it also serves as a strong warning signal for the wider industry. What’s important, though, is to understand the situation is far more complex than a simple decline in demand.
Over time, Sweden’s regulatory approach became increasingly onerous, targeting particularly land-based casinos. Requirements related to Aml, responsible gaming, and source-of-funds checks reached a point where a casino visit could feel more like an interrogation than an evening of entertainment. That fundamentally undermined the players’ experience and, ultimately, the basic economics of operating a casino.
To be clear, I fully support regulation, Rg and robust compliance. However, in Sweden the balance was lost, both on what was expected by the regulatory side and in how it was implemented by the operator.
At the same time, players had access to nearly 400 table games venues in restaurant environments without any of these requirements, live poker clubs, alongside around 100 licensed iGaming operators—and many unlicensed ones—competing for the same wallet.
Finally, running a casino in such a challenging environment requires strong and sustained commitment from shareholders. In Sweden, that level of strategic interest did not appear to be there. All of these factors combined ultimately contributed to the closure of Casino Cosmopol.
The key lesson is that gaming regulation needs to be approached holistically. When regulation is optimized in small, isolated segments rather than viewed as a complete ecosystem, players—and the associated problems—are simply shifted from one channel to another.
The closure of casinos did not reduce gambling-related harm. Instead, recreational players lost access to a safe, entertaining, regulated environment, and many experienced industry professionals lost their jobs. This highlights the risk of addressing symptoms in one part of the market without considering the broader impact across the entire gambling landscape.”
