Switzerland’s online gambling blacklist continues to grow, including one site that appears to be piggybacking on the name of a locally licensed online casino that has yet to launch.
On Tuesday, Switzerland’s federal gaming board (ESBK) issued the latest update of the nation’s blacklist of unauthorized international online gambling domains catering to local punters without local permission. There are 35 new additions, bringing the cumulative total to a healthy 285 uninvited and very much unwelcome domains.
As usual, most of the fresh faces are bog-standard Curacao-licensed online casinos, including several number-prefixed mirrors of the same operators, some of which had previously been honored with a spot on ESBK’s naughty list.
There is at least one slightly more recognizable domain, namely cryptocurrency-based sportsbook Sportsbet.io, which has official betting partnerships with several UK football clubs and whose logo can be found on the jerseys of Southampton FC and Watford FC.
Even more interesting is the presence of Pasino.com, an Ethereum smart contract-based online casino clone of Ethereum-based BC.Game (which not coincidentally was also included in the most recent blacklist additions).
Pasino.com appears to be betting that Swiss gamblers might confuse it with Pasino.ch, the planned online casino of Group Partouche’s Casino du Lac Meyrin in Geneva. Pasino.ch continues to show only a ‘coming soon’ banner with the opportunity to subscribe to learn when it launches. If nothing else, the existence of Pasino.com vividly illustrates the maxim that if you snooze, you lose (you also lose if you fail to snap up all brand-affiliated domains).
Switzerland did welcome its sixth ESBK-blessed online casino last month via 7melons.ch, the online arm of Grand Casino Kurssal Bern AG, a Casinos Austria International (CAI) property. That launch followed February’s launch of StarVegas.ch, the online casino of Casino Interlaken, another CAI property.
Meanwhile, Mycasino.ch, the online gambling site of Grand Casino Luzern and the country’s current online market leader, continues to raise its local profile. Shortly after signing a shirt sponsorship with footballers FC Luzern, the site signed a deal to put its logo on the jersey of Geneva-based hockey club Genève-Servette HC starting next June.
