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Casinos for you
Swiss Federal Gaming Board Empowers Public Welfare & Combats Illegal Gambling
By Shane Addinall Jun 27, 2023 LegalityWe delve into the Swiss Federal Gaming Board (ESBK) review of 2022. We learned how they protected players from gambling harm, secured the regulated market, and supported the local pension plan.Switzerland’s Federal Gaming Board (ESBK) completed a review of its performance last year and shared the results on its official website. The press release covered several essential responsibilities of the Gaming Board and gave a snapshot of the actions taken and noteworthy achievements.
In short, the 2022 activity report looks at how many new online casinos received licenses, the number of blocked gambling websites, plans for ensuring more responsible gambling, and the amount that online casino revenues have added to the national pension fund.
Actively Onboarding New Licensees
ESBK-issued casino licenses will expire in 2024. To allow the industry to continue to function while simultaneously avoiding processing bottlenecks, the regulator began the renewal process in June 2022.
After an in-depth review of the casino landscape report, the Federal Council split the Swiss gambling sector into 23 unique divisions. The first 21 divisions align with existing regulatory jurisdiction, adding two new areas. These new divisions are Lausanne and Winterthur, offering additional Type A (no game restrictions and increased revenue limits) licensing opportunities for offshore operators.
There will only be ten Type A licenses available across the 23 divisions in all of Switzerland.
Nationwide Focus on Safer Gambling
An important task of the regulator is to ensure that players are being provided with access to games of chance in the safest and most secure manner possible.
To achieve this, they undertook 59 inspections in 2022, with 25 of these as part of the approval or update process for casinos and the games they offer to players. The remaining 34 were split across two fronts: casino–related data security and financial management and ensuring that casinos do not market to at-risk individuals and pay to the correct accounts.
The net effect of these and other inspections focusing on land-based gambling venues is ensuring a transparent and trustworthy gambling sector.
Clamping Down on Illegal Gambling
The ESBK continued to aggressively pursue action against unlicensed offshore operators who were found to be targeting Swiss players. 2022 saw an additional 179 gambling websites placed under investigation, with four of these leading to intensive long-term legal cases involving multiple stakeholders.
An ongoing challenge for the gambling authority is getting approval to block these sites at an IP level. While local Internet Service Providers (ISP) have the facilities to block unlicensed websites, the Federal Gambling Act 2019 does not require that they do so.
Currently, 1026 casino domains are on the ESBK blacklist, with more added each year.
Impactful Contribution to Swiss Pensions
One of the fantastic ways the Swiss government has used the additional revenue that gambling provides is to prop up the local old-age pension program.
According to the ESBK, Swiss casinos generated more than CHF 880 million (€898.4 million) in gross gaming, a noteworthy increase from the previous year’s total of CHF 640 million (€653.4 million).
This remarkable revenue growth afforded the regulator the opportunity to boost the national AHV pension system by CHF 352 million (€359.4 million).
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