Flags, sports, and the common good: the nationalism that advances the gambling industry

Abstract

This study investigates how nationalist sentiments enable the gambling industry to capitalize on national markets. With the help of qualitative content analytical tools, we analyzed 500 curated social media posts targeting Finnish and Swedish audiences. The study compared narrative templates, identifying speaker positions (inside/outside sociocultural context) and types of nationalist connotations (surface-level/in-depth). The results are displayed in a four-field matrix that reveals that Finland’s state gambling monopoly, Veikkaus, leverages ‘cultural nationalism’ to highlight its social role, portraying itself as a supporter of Finnish values, sports, and civil society. In contrast, international gambling companies and former domestic monopolies in Sweden’s license-based regulatory system use more mechanical, ‘sports-nationalist’ symbols, though the former monopoly companies occasionally refer to traditional Swedish cultural identity symbols. Compared to Veikkaus, the Swedish operators approach the national market as commercial outsiders, seeking public trust through sports associations. The study sheds light on how regulatory systems shape digital capitalist strategies for targeting national consumers on the social media.