Switzerland has become one of the countries closing its casino facilities as part of nation’s wider efforts to tackle the further spread of coronavirus inspection, but licensed gambling companies would be able to continue offering their games online.
The country’s Government unveiled a decision to shut down public venues until April 19th, 2020. At a special session that took place at the beginning of the week, the Swiss Federal Council announced that special measures are to be imposed on all casinos on the territory of the country. The land-based gambling facilities would stop operation as of March 17th until at least April 19th. Apart from that, Switzerland has also expanded its blacklist of unlicensed remote online gambling operators.
For the time being, the existing Swiss gambling legislation allows only land-based casinos to hold licenses to operate online gambling services. So, the country’s authorities continue their work aimed at suspending unauthorized gambling websites as part of the Government’s efforts to make local gamblers more interested in the offering of land-based casino venues.
On March 17th, the federal gaming board of Switzerland (ESBK) announced the latest update of its blacklist of globally licensed online gambling companies, which, however, are not allowed to offer their services to Swiss consumers. The latest update of the Government’s blacklist added another 27 domains to the list of suspended remote operators, bringing the overall number of gambling websites that have to be blocked by local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to 172.
Comlot Brings the Number of Blocked Domains to 101 with the Latest Additions
Just like with the previous updates of the blacklist, the majority of the new domains included in the ban-list are online casinos that hold operating licenses in Curacao. One of the domains is a mirror of the UK gambling operator bet365. As CasinoGamesPro has already revealed, a number of bet365-related gambling websites have already been banned by the Swiss Lottery and Betting Board (Comlot) that has an independent list of online gambling companies that are not permitted to offer their services in Switzerland.
The announcement of the country’s Government to add another 27 online gambling operators to its blacklist was followed by a similar announcement of Comlot. Yesterday, the latter added 13 new domains to its blacklist, with this announcement bringing their total number to 101. Some of the most notable new additions to the Comlot’s blacklist include the Danish-facing website of bet365, an Efbet domain, as well as two websites of Wirwetten, a gambling company licensed holding an Alderney license.
As of January 1st, 2019, the Swiss Government allowed its retail casino operators to start offering online casino products. So far, six brick-and-mortar casinos have been given permission to do so through online gambling licenses. The latest one to launch its gambling website, StarVegas.ch, was Casino Interlaken.
