Paf, the gaming company based in the Åland Islands, has agreed a pilot project with Meta to stop unlicensed gambling operators reaching Swiss players through Facebook and Instagram. Work is due to start shortly.
Under the agreement, Paf will share licence documents and URLs with Meta so the platform can better tell licensed operators from unlicensed ones. The material covers both operators and affiliates. Paf has not said how Meta will use the information or what happens to advertisers that cannot show a valid Swiss licence.
Paf confirmed the agreement in a statement on 5 October. Jesper Eliasson, Chief Business Development Officer at Paf, presented the project on a Scandinavia panel at SBC Summit in Lisbon last week.
Why the pilot starts in Switzerland
Paf is the technology and knowledge partner of mycasino.ch, the online casino run by Grand Casino Luzern. According to Paf, mycasino.ch is the largest operator in the licensed Swiss market, with revenue of more than €100 million a year.
Under the Money Gaming Act, in force since 2019, Switzerland only grants online casino licences to its land-based casinos and blocks access to unlicensed sites. In March, Casino Locarno became the 10th holder of a Swiss online casino licence.
Paf says unlicensed operators systematically get around the controls social media platforms apply in Switzerland. It also points to Europe’s patchwork of licences, which makes it hard for a platform to tell who is behind an advert.
“The license can come from somewhere entirely different, and in that tangle of jurisdictions it is hard to spot,” Eliasson said.
Eliasson told the Lisbon panel that Meta does not want illegal operators on its platform.
“I don’t want to share the market with anyone who has no license,” he said.
Paf’s stated aim is a working model in Switzerland that can later be applied to other markets.
Paf’s asks to regulators
Eliasson was clear that cooperation with platforms will not solve the problem on its own.
“We can share data and have good conversations with the platforms, but that does not take us all the way,” he said.
Paf wants supervisory authorities to send cease-and-desist letters to unlicensed operators and their affiliates. It also wants structured cooperation between authorities in different markets, including US authorities, and powers to freeze the assets of operators that deliberately target a regulated market.
Paf warned against relying on tighter product rules. In its statement, the company said that if rules become too strict, players move to other online options, which works against what the rules are meant to achieve. Paf said it wants players to be met with responsible terms, loss limits and tools that work, at operators that take on that responsibility.
Meta faces a court case in the Netherlands
The pilot comes as Meta faces legal action over gambling adverts elsewhere in Europe. In late September, Dutch trade association VNLOK, which represents licensed online gambling operators, summoned Meta to the Amsterdam District Court over illegal gambling adverts on Facebook and Instagram.
VNLOK is asking the court to rule that Meta is not meeting its obligations under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). It also wants Meta to take steps to better prevent illegal gambling adverts aimed at Dutch consumers. The case follows repeated reporting on the scale of illegal gambling adverts on Meta in the Netherlands.
The two efforts work through different channels. Paf’s pilot is a voluntary data-sharing arrangement between one operator and the platform; VNLOK’s case asks a court to enforce Meta’s legal duties under EU law.
What happens next
Paf said work with Meta will begin shortly. Eliasson did not promise results.
“I don’t know whether we will succeed, but we have taken the first steps,” he said.
Paf said it will keep working with Meta against unlicensed operators whatever the outcome of the pilot. How far the model travels depends on two things Paf does not control: whether Meta applies licence checks beyond a single pilot market, and whether regulators take up the enforcement tools Paf is asking for.
Source: Paf
