For many years, foreign companies, mostly domiciled in off-shore states, have been offering gambling in Switzerland via the Internet. Because they are domiciled abroad, they escape the supervision of the Swiss authorities and override Swiss law.
Under the Federal Gambling Act (Gambling Act, LJAr), it is prohibited to offer gambling from abroad. This activity is also subject to criminal penalties. The provisions of the LJAr concerning the restriction of access to online gambling offers not authorized in Switzerland aim to block access to online gambling when the gambling offers are accessible from Switzerland and their operator does not does not have the required authorization. The Gespa and the Federal Gaming Commission (CFMJ) have been legally mandated to each publish a blocking list (“blacklist”) of domain names that offer unauthorized foreign gambling.
Swiss telecommunications service providers are required to block access to the domains on these lists (DNS blocking).
The lists in question will be published for the first time in the Federal Gazette in the form of a general decision. Thereafter, the registration of any new supplier or domain name will also be.
These measures are intended to prevent foreign companies, which often only provide insufficient measures to combat fraud, money laundering and gambling addiction and pay neither taxes nor duties in Switzerland, from participating freely in the Swiss gambling market with their illegal offers.
In this section you will find the updated list of domain names of foreign operators which must be blocked, as well as an archive with all the old versions of the said list in PDF format.
If you offer Internet access in Switzerland as a telecommunications service provider (TSP), you will find information on the technical implementation of blocking below.
CFMJ - List of Blocked Game Offers
Here you will find the list of blocked gambling offers that fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Gaming Commission CFMJ.
If you offer Internet access in Switzerland, you will find information on the technical implementation of blocking below.
If you need to implement access blocking, you can subscribe to our e-mail information service. This will automatically send an e-mail to the suppliers registered each time the list is updated by the Gespa. Please note, however, that this e-mail will not replace the official publication in the Federal Gazette, which alone has legal value.
Technical implementation
Registration for the information service
Sign up if you want to be informed without obligation of the latest updates to our blocking list (only for TSPs that offer Internet access):
https://www.gespa.ch/fr/lutte-contre-les-activites-illegales/blocage-dacces