When did Norway remove slot machines from shops, kiosks and petrol stations?
Norway removed them at the end of June 2007, with the ban taking effect on 1 July 2007. Until then the machines stood in open public premises, shopping centres, grocery shops and bus stations among them, and the state handed the monopoly on gaming machines to Norsk Tipping, which brought in server-connected replacement terminals called Multix from 2009 and Belago afterwards. Norway is the most useful case study in gambling regulation because the effect was actually measured rather than argued about: peer-reviewed work by Engebo, Torsheim and Pallesen found participation in land-based machine gambling fell from a predicted 18.7 percent in 2005 to 2007 to 1.5 percent in 2008 to 2013, and calls to the national helpline fell by nearly 70 percent, from 2,100 in 2005 to 657 in 2008. Removing the machines from everyday places did not move the behaviour somewhere else. It reduced it.
The rare gambling restriction with published before-and-after numbers attached, which is why it gets cited everywhere.
The evidence
| What changed | When | Measured effect |
|---|---|---|
| Machines removed from public premises | End of June 2007, ban effective 1 July 2007 | Machine gambling participation fell from a predicted 18.7% (2005 to 2007) to 1.5% (2008 to 2013) |
| Helpline demand | 2005 compared with 2008 | Calls fell from 2,100 to 657, a drop of nearly 70% |
| State terminals introduced | Mainly from 2009 | Multix interactive video terminals, connected to a central server, under the Norsk Tipping monopoly |
How we know
Two dates circulate and both are right about different things. The machines physically came out at the end of June 2007; the prohibition is dated 1 July 2007. Sources that give only one of them are not contradicting each other. The participation and helpline figures come from a peer-reviewed paper, not from an operator or a campaign group, and they are modelled predicted rates rather than a raw headcount, which is how that paper states them. One caution about how this result gets used. The Norwegian ban happened alongside a state monopoly and, later, replacement terminals with mandatory player registration and loss limits, so it is a package rather than a clean single-variable experiment. It shows that removing machines from ordinary daily spaces reduced measured gambling. It does not by itself tell you which part of the package did the work.