Sharp increase in reports of suspicious sports betting
Keystone-SDA
Last year the Intercantonal Gambling Supervisory Authority received 184 reports of suspicious activities in connection with 166 sports competitions.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
This represents a sharp increase on 2023, when there were 107 reports from 92 competitions.
The Intercantonal Gambling Supervisory Authority (Gespa) announced on Tuesday that an improved exchange of information, particularly on an international level, had contributed to the higher number of reports. Once again, the majority of reports related to football, which also generates by far the largest betting volumes. The number of reports relating to football almost doubled compared to 2023, from 74 to 140 reports.
+ Winners and losers: sports betting in Switzerland
The reasons for this increase cannot be determined with certainty, the report continued. One obvious reason is the quantitative and qualitative improvement in communication within the Group of Copenhagen, the network of national platforms. Football receives increased attention due to its importance on the betting market, and an optimised exchange of information leads to significantly more reports.
Gespa wrote that the next few years will show whether this is a sustainable development or an outlier. The figures for the other sports are once again very low and do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about possible trends.
Reports with a clear link to Switzerland are still rare. In the 2024 reporting year, Gespa reported two cases to the prosecution authorities in order to clarify whether any criminal offences were committed in Switzerland. These cases involved anomalies on the betting market or conspicuous bets on competitions that took place abroad. Once again, there were no convictions for match-fixing in Switzerland in 2024.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
How we work
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate them into English. A journalist then briefly reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
Did you find this explanation helpful? Please fill out the short survey below to help us understand your needs.
External Content
Don’t miss your chance to make a difference! Take our survey and share your thoughts.
