Norway’s Oil Fund Holds Billions in Gambling Stocks

Norway has spent years tightening the rules around online gambling, with authorities blocking payments, restricting ads, taking down websites, and putting consistent pressure on international operators, all for the purpose of protecting the state-run Norsk Tipping and Norsk Rikstoto. 

However, while the country continues to keep a firm grip on gambling at home, the Government Pension Fund Global, better known as the Oil Fund, is heavily invested in some of the same global gambling companies Norway tries to keep out of its own market.

Norway’s Paradox

As of June 30, 2025, the Oil Fund sat at $1.94 trillion, and a closer look at the portfolio shows that Norway benefits financially from an industry it actively limits within its borders.

The fund’s holdings include a range of casino, sportsbook, lottery, and iGaming companies, with some raising more questions than others. While the Oil Fund’s decisions do not depend on political debate, the Council on Ethics is responsible for checking whether any investment crosses ethical lines. 

While the fund has reduced some exposure to online gambling in recent years, a few positions continue to stand out. Among them, we can mention Evolution. The company supplies live casino games to operators that the Norwegian Gambling Authority has pursued with DNS blocking. Yet the Oil Fund has held shares in Evolution even as regulators targeted some of its customers.

Nonetheless, contrary to expectations, public criticism brought to the Oil Fund hasn’t been focusing on gambling, but instead targeted investments connected to geopolitical conflicts, especially companies that might profit from war. 

The fund doesn’t invest based on foreign policy goals, which is why it has previously owned shares in firms the gambling regulator has worked against.

The Numbers Speak for Themselves

In raw numbers, the Oil Fund’s involvement in gambling looks like this: $3,246,707,536 total gambling and iGaming investment, $1,941,071,971,596 total GPFG value, and 0.167% share of fund invested in gambling.

In other words, about one dollar out of every 600 in the Oil Fund ends up in the gambling sector. It’s a small fraction of the whole, but still more than $3 billion, or roughly NOK 35 billion, a striking scale for a country with a deep focus on enforcing domestic gambling regulations. 

Toward the end of 2024, the Council on Ethics assessed various industries, including gambling, to determine if they properly align with the GPFG’s ethical standards. The result of the assessment did not exclude any gambling companies. A government-appointed committee has until October 15, 2026, to review the Council’s mandate.