Game Developers Enter Swiss Market Following New Gambling Act

Switzerland has just become another European country to regulate online gaming. Only four operators have managed to secure a license and many iGaming developers are now ready to officially debut their locally-certified games as they enter into partnerships with local casinos.

The legislation came into effect in January of this year, with unlicensed sites being blacklisted by the Federal Gaming Board (Eidgenössische Spielbankenkommission, ESBK) and the Lotteries and Betting Commission (Comlot) from 1^st July. Based on the government estimates, around $253m is currently wagered with unregulated foreign betting sites. According to a report, the full blacklist of domains blocked by a DNS lock will be published in the third quarter of 2019 as the Gambling Act only allows the country's land-based casinos to launch iGaming offerings, but blocks any operators without a brick and mortar presence.

The four operators that have been granted the license are Grand Casino Baden, Casino Davos, Casino Zürichsee, and Grand Casino Luzern, with the latter launching MyCasino.ch in August using a gaming platform from Åland Islands-based operator Paf. Among other new mentions, Evolution Gaming has stated that it has entered into a content partnership with Grand Casino Baden, which will be offering their full suite of live dealer casino games on the Gamanza powered Jackpots.ch online casino.

Another game developer, iSoftBet is also ready to launch a portfolio of 70 of its best-performing proprietary slot titles which have been locally certified. This includes releases like Jumbo Stampede, Hot Spin, Book of Immortals, and Lucky Stripes. Doing so Switzerland becomes iSoftBet’s 16^th market opening among the UK, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Alderney, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

That said, keep an eye on the aforementioned Swiss operators as their sites are planned to go live later this or next month.