Swiss regulators blacklist 65 international gambling operators

When Swiss voters went to the polls and approved a sprawling new set of gambling regulations they did so with the knowledge that one day their government would create a blacklist of unapproved operators who weren’t partnered with local companies. Those operators would then have their IP addresses blocked from Swiss players and would be unable to compete in the marketplace.
Though those laws have been on the books since January of 2019, the blacklist has only gone into effect this week and is impacting 65 international gambling operators. That measure of safety was built into the law to allow operators additional time to comply with the new rules. That said, few if any of the 65 blocked operators were likely surprised to be blacklisted in Switzerland. Some of the operators had actually been out of the Swiss market for quite some time. Others, like William Hill had stuck around to, as our colleagues at CalvinAyre.com described, “squeezing every last bit of profit from the country while it was still legal to do so.”
The blacklisted operators (see a complete list here) are not permanently barred from doing business in the Swiss gambling market. Any operator can earn its way back into the good graces of the Swiss government by keeping clean for five years and not serving Swiss players.
Switzerland’s gambling market, thought tiny, benefits from not being part of the European Union. As such, it’s not bound by the same free market principles as that organization.