Regulators in Switzerland have continued their battle against unregulated operators by blacklisting an additional 61 illegal gambling sites.
Eidgenössische Spielbankenkommission (ESBK) has blocked another bet365 website, among others. Meanwhile, the Inter-Cantonal Lotteries and Betting Commission (Comlot) has restricted access to three Exclusivebet sites.
Swiss internet service providers (ISPs) have been ordered to block all of the blacklisted operators’ domains with immediate effect.
Online gambling blacklists were initially released in the Central European country last year. Since then, they’ve been updated on a regular basis.
Blacklisted
The bet365 website that has been blocked by the ESBK this time around is 365sb.com. 365sb.com joins bet365.com, plus its Italian and Danish domains, on the blacklist.
Other casinos to be listed by the ESBK include kingbilly.com, 1betasia.com and Argo Casino. Six 22Bet websites were ordered to be blocked, as were Two each from Diamond Club VIP Casino, Lucky31, MrXBet, Dublinbet and Vavda.
As far as Comlot is concerned, alpenwetten.com and bahigo28.com joined the three banned Exclusivebet websites on the blacklist. Interwetten7.com was blocked by both Comlot and the ESBK.
List of blocked sites growing
Since the introduction of last September’s gambling website blacklists, both regulators have announced frequent updates. The most recent one before this was in March, when the ESBK added 27 sites to its list and Comlot 13 to its own.
A referendum was held in Switzerland last summer to determine whether or not online gambling regulations should be tightened. 33.8% of eligible voters turned out, with 72.9% of these voting in favour of blocking foreign betting sites from serving Swiss players.
According to government figures that were current at the time, users in the country were spending the equivalent of €215 million on the websites of unregulated non-Swiss operators.
