Swiss Casinos To Develop Online Casino With Playtech
The Swiss Federal Council has confirmed that the country’s new gambling laws will come into effect from January 2019.
This opens up the country’s online gambling market and iGaming operators are lining up to get a piece of this new market. Swiss Casinos, a land-based casino operator is eager to get launch its first online casino and has confirmed that it is partnering with Playtech to develop its own online offering.
The Swiss Casinos group runs several casinos in Switzerland. They are located in Zürich, Schaffhausen, Pfäffikon, and St Gallen. The company has applied for an online gaming license and is confident that it will receive approval. Swiss Casinos decided to partner with leading casino software developer Playtech in order to come up with a robust and seamless online casino platform.
It’s easy to see why Swiss Casinos would go with a brand like Playtech. The company has been around since 1999 and it has been providing gaming software for a long time. Playtech-powered casinos are a prominent part of the online gambling market and many Swiss players will appreciate having a solid software provider behind an online casino servicing them.
In a statement, Marc Baumann, Swiss Casinos Group chief executive, said
We are extremely excited to have found an internationally experienced and innovative partner in Playtech. We will now be able to offer our customers in Switzerland an attractive iGaming offering
On the Playtech side of things, CEO Shimon Akad was just as pleased. He pointed out that Playtech has a history of working with some of the leading casino operators in the world and has helped them develop digital offerings that have had immense success in key gambling markets.
New iGaming Market From Jan 2019
The new gaming law will see Switzerland open its doors to the online gaming industry from January 2019. However, this does not mean that gambling operators can immediately launch online casinos and get players to start wagering immediately. The gambling regulator has provided land based casino operators with a six month period in which they can request to expand their license to cover online gambling.
This means that the most controversial part of the law, the blocking of all unlicensed gambling sites, will not take effect until July 2019. The site-blocking part of the bill almost derailed the entire bill, with many critics claiming it was online censorship. The bill’s opponents pushed hard for a referendum to take place in July. However, Swiss voters voted in favour of the bill with overwhelming support and that was enough for the bill to push through.
Besides allowing for online gambling, the bill also set maximum buy-ins and prize pools for small-scale poker tournaments not run by casinos. Lotteries and raffles also have a maximum prize value placed on them which is CHF50,000.
Carolyn DuttonAuthor
Carolyn is our legislation expert, with a background in law she is able to cover the current state of gambling around the world
