Despite scandal after scandal hitting Norsk Tipping in Hamar, almost all parties except the Progress Party continue to defend the Norwegian gaming monopoly. It is harmful to both players, gambling addicts and volunteers, who are experiencing ever-shrinking money bags.

That should have been enough now. There should have been broad agreement that the Norwegian gaming model is not working. Norsk Tipping has failed, and in the last year alone they have made so many mistakes that one can begin to wonder what they are really up to in Hamar.

Gambling addicts have not been allowed to exclude themselves, million-dollar prizes have been paid out by mistake, they have deceived players by stating incorrect chances of winning in parts of the Eurojackpot and Lotto draws, and now right at the beginning of the summer tens of thousands of Norwegians were wrongly told that they had become millionaires. The latter led to the CEO having to leave, albeit with a good Lotto win in the form of a severance pay of just over three million in tow. But it is not enough. The system has failed, and the system must also be changed.

At the same time as Norsk Tipping is throwing away the trust that has been given to them through the Norwegian gaming monopoly and giving millions in salaries to the management, Norwegian sports and volunteering are going on the back burner. Tens of thousands of children and young people do not get the opportunity to play football with their friends, or play in a sports team in their free time. The parents cannot afford it, and the sports teams and sports teams do not have the opportunity to foot the bill either. This creates exclusion, and is an enormous social problem that we must take very seriously.

We are therefore faced with a complicated problem, where the current system does not fulfill the intention of the whole thing. It does not work for the players, it does not manage to maintain trust in the population, and it does not manage to finance culture and sports in a satisfactory way. It must be solved, and quickly.

All of our neighboring countries, and almost the rest of Europe, have solved the system challenges by opening up the gaming market to more companies, while at the same time imposing strict requirements on the companies that will operate there.

A licensing model. This gives the Norwegian authorities the tools they need to create a healthy and good gambling market in Norway. They increase income for sports and volunteering through the tax bill, they implement measures against gambling addiction as a result of real control and overview of gambling, and last but not least, they force Norsk Tipping to take the problems seriously, through competition with other companies.

The experience with a licensing model from all our neighboring countries is that the proportion of gambling addicts decreases, funding for good causes increases, and the authorities gain better control over gambling.