The Swiss government is looking at regulating and legalising online gambling, the move comes as many Swiss nationals already play online and many Swiss banks transfer money from players to online operators in Europe and overseas, so enforcing the current law seems useless.
So now the countries Conference of the Cantonal Directors in Charge of Gambling and Lotteries has put their full support in favour of introducing a legal framework to legaslise online gambling and at the same time seek taxes from online operators offering their products in the country.
However any new laws would come with the condition that it must not come with excessive liberalization. The CDCM said that discussions were held regarding regulation during a recent plenary assembly and decided that “it would be convenient to give gambling operators the opportunity to offer their games on the internet.”
One of the main conditions the organization said would be that licensing should only be open to ‘brick-and-mortar’ operators currently regulated in Switzerland, which would ban any offshore online operators.
The CDCM said: “We support the idea of extending the current licence. The online environment is not a new market: it is only a new medium to distribute the offer already available, it addresses the same clients and it meets the same needs of the traditional games.
“The arrival of new operators specialised in the online sector would lead to a competition that would be problematic from a political, social and possibly even economic point of view.” “We believe that those who hold a licence to offer brick-and-mortar casino games should not be ‘punished’ for the fact that they have respected the rules that currently forbid them to run operations online.”
At present no time frame for a bill legislating for online gambling has been given, but observers within the online gambling sector believe that early 2015 will see more movement towards legalising online gambling.
No comments:
Post a Comment