Switzerland’s Conference of the Cantonal Directors in Charge of Gambling and Lotteries (CDCM) has announced its support for the regulation of the country’s online gambling market.
The news comes after iGaming Business reported in May that the Swiss Federal Government published its first draft of a new bill to regulate online gambling in the country for the first time.
The CDCM said that it discussed regulation during a plenary assembly on June 30 and decided that “it would be convenient to give gambling operators the opportunity to offer their games on the internet”.
However, despite backing potential regulation, the CDCM said that this should only be open to ‘brick-and-mortar’ operators currently licensed in Switzerland, thus blocking any international online firms.
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.”
source : www.igamingbusiness.com
