The government in Switzerland looked long and hard at gaming regulation throughout the world, before picking the best points to incorporate into Swiss law. The Swiss voters by 73% agreed to licence casinos in 1993, after being promised that gaming taxes would go to subsidise the federal pension scheme and to the local canton governments, but it took seven years to bring about the necessary law changes, and the first casino licences were issued in 2001.

Twenty-one casino licences were granted, the highest concentration in Europe, and are valid for twenty years. With similar ideas for regeneration as those held by the British government, six licences were authorised for mountain resorts in the belief that casinos would boost the stagnating economies in alpine regions. Of the five casinos that opened only one, Crans Montana in the canton of Valais, is showing a profit, and there is little optimism for the sixth licence. Two, in Arosa and Zermatt, have closed and St Moritz and Davos are struggling.

There are two types of licence and the fourteen operations that hold a ‘B’ licence have restrictions on the number of slot machines and maximum bets. However, these operations do get an advantage on the heavy Swiss taxation paid by casinos. ‘A’ class casinos are taxed at 40% and ‘B’ class at 30%. A government decision to reduce the tax burden on ‘B’ class casinos to 20% is not seen as being likely to help the struggling mountain resort casinos. “When there is too much snow no one can reach the ski slopes, when there is too little snow no one goes” was how one operator put it.

The Swiss Gaming Commission has the responsibility of inspecting all the applications for a new licence. This includes investigating company shareholders’ backgrounds and documenting every detail of the management team, its contracts and its suppliers. It is an ongoing process with the vetting repeated each time there is a change in shareholders.

Casino class ‘A’ operators also have a social contract to fulfil; they are obliged by law to do everything within their power to prevent players from over gambling. Members of staff are trained to recognize the characteristics of a problem gambler so that early identification aids the process of professional counselling. If a customer is banned, the ban is countrywide. An expert in addictive behaviour, Professor Jörg Häfeli who is in charge of the ‘careplay’ project, is of the opinion that if gambling is banned then it goes underground, and appears to agree with other research that a problem gambler does not have the problem because of gambling but because of an addictive personality. The Swiss Federal Gaming Board reportedly says that an explosion in gambling, predicted by many, has not happened.

The UK government is legislating to remove children from the gambling equation. In Switzerland from next year the only slot machines of any type in the country will be within casinos, all of which are barred to under-18s. So far the British legislation has not been finalised, but the Swiss model would seem to have much to recommend it and much to learn from it.

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