Switzerland’s intercantonal gambling regulator Gespa has said that youth protection in retail sports betting is “currently not working satisfactorily”, after test purchases found that minors were able to place bets at almost half of the lottery outlets visited, even as it gave the two state lottery companies a positive verdict on their online safeguards.

The findings are set out in Gespa’s 2025 evaluation report on player protection at Swisslos and Loterie Romande, which the regulator published on its news page on 2 November. The report confirms the results of a test-purchase exercise Gespa first disclosed in July, and its publication was delayed after both lottery companies challenged the regulator’s right to release it.

Minors placed bets in 47.5% of attempts

Blue Cross Switzerland carried out 200 test purchases on Gespa’s behalf in 2025: 100 at Loterie Romande points of sale in the canton of Vaud and 100 at Swisslos outlets in the canton of Zurich, covering both urban and rural or suburban locations. Only retail sports betting was tested, meaning Swisslos’s Sporttip and Loterie Romande’s JouezSport, not lottery draw games.

Minors succeeded in placing a bet in 47.5% of cases, and in 44.5% of purchases there was no age check at all. The failure rate was 56% at the Swisslos outlets in Zurich and 39% at the Loterie Romande outlets in Vaud.

Self-service terminals performed worse than staffed counters. Two-thirds (66.7%) of attempts made at terminals succeeded, compared with 44.5% where staff were involved.

Gespa cautioned that the sample was small and targeted rather than representative, so the results cannot be generalised. It was the first test-purchase exercise the regulator itself had commissioned, so there are no earlier Gespa figures to compare against.

Online controls judged effective

By contrast, Gespa again rated the lottery companies’ online player protection as positive for 2025, singling out mandatory capped loss limits as the most effective measure. It welcomed Swisslos’s decision in March 2026 to cut the maximum Sporttip loss limit to CHF 1,000 for players aged 18 to 21.

The regulator noted, however, that more than three-quarters of the two companies’ gross gaming revenue still comes from land-based channels, where measures are harder both to enforce and to assess.

“The lottery companies are required to implement the existing regulations consistently and, where necessary, to take additional measures,” Gespa said in its July statement on the test purchases (translated from German).

Operators respond

Both companies have taken steps since the tests. According to Gespa, these include a “Guess the Age” training tool introduced in 2026, a campaign asking retail staff to check identification for anyone who appears to be aged 18 to 25, and U18 and U25 stickers at points of sale. ID scanners on self-service terminals are under discussion.

Loterie Romande, whose JouezSport sportsbook moved onto OpenBet technology in October, ran 832 test purchases of its own in 2025, with failing outlets given extra training and retested. Swisslos carried out its first mystery shopping exercise in January 2025 across five urban areas.

Publication dispute

Swisslos and Loterie Romande contested Gespa’s right to publish the evaluation and asked for a formal, appealable decision, according to Swiss newspapers Blick and Beobachter. Gespa ruled that publication was lawful. The companies did not appeal, making the ruling final, but the dispute held up release by several weeks.

Gespa said it will commission further test purchases “in the foreseeable future” and reserves the right to order additional binding measures if the findings are confirmed. The full evaluation report is available in German on the regulator’s website.

Allwyn has agreed to take a global perpetual licence to Kambi Group’s sportsbook source code, a deal that will let the lottery and gaming group run its betting operations on technology it owns. It also confirmed that it will buy the 30% of Instant Win Gaming (IWG) it does not already hold.

The Lucerne-based group announced both transactions on 10 November in a release titled “Allwyn advances strategy to own and manage key technology and content capabilities”. Allwyn has been saying for months that sports betting was the one major vertical it had not yet brought in-house.

Kambi deal: source code rather than white label

Under the agreements, Allwyn receives a licence to Kambi’s sportsbook source code covering both digital and retail channels. Allwyn described it as the first transaction of its type for Kambi, which normally supplies its sportsbook to operators as a managed service paid for through a revenue share.

Kambi will provide development and deployment services during a transition period, after which a dedicated Kambi team will move across to Allwyn. Allwyn did not say how long the transition will last.

Allwyn will pay €50m over the three years to 2029 and expects to capitalise the cost, with roughly half falling in 2027. It will also build central sportsbook capabilities of its own, including trading, pricing and risk management. The group expects these to add central costs of “a low-tens-of-€millions amount annually” from 2027, which it said would later be offset by savings in its business segments.

The new platform will cover Allwyn’s existing sports betting operations, which generated more than €800m in gross gaming revenue in the 12 months to 31 December 2025, “with optionality to expand into new markets”. The release did not say which brands or markets will migrate first.

“We are delighted to announce further progress in our strategy to own and manage key technology and content capabilities that enhance product innovation, differentiation and time to market,” said Kresimir Spajic, chief executive of Allwyn Digital.

Werner Becher, chief executive of Kambi, said Allwyn’s decision to choose Kambi technology to unify its sportsbook operations “reflects the strength of our product, our expertise and our track record of delivering at scale in regulated markets”.

Full control of IWG

Separately, IWG’s minority shareholders have exercised a put option requiring Allwyn to buy their remaining 30% stake. The price, set by a pre-determined valuation formula, is about US$120m (€107m), subject to customary closing and working capital adjustments. Completion is expected in the first quarter of 2027.

Allwyn first took its 70% holding in the instant-win and e-instant game developer in 2024. It said IWG’s adjusted EBITDA grew 30% in 2025 on a US dollar basis, that the founders will remain in their executive roles, and that the buyout simplifies the group’s corporate structure.

Why it matters

The Kambi licence gives Allwyn a route to an owned sportsbook after an earlier attempt to buy one fell through. As reported by iGaming Business and other trade outlets, Allwyn walked away earlier this year from its agreement to acquire a majority of Novibet’s parent company after feedback from the Hellenic Competition Commission, a deal that had been driven largely by Novibet’s sportsbook technology.

The move fits a wider push to own core technology across the group, which also saw Allwyn hire former Betsson technology chief Fredrik Ögren as group CTO in October.

For Kambi, the deal is a test of a new commercial model. Rather than earning a recurring revenue share, it is effectively selling its core product outright to one of Europe’s largest gambling groups, with trade press reports citing a Kambi estimate of €45m to €50m in operating profit contribution over 2027 to 2031. Other B2B suppliers will be watching whether large operators follow Allwyn in preferring to license and own sportsbook code rather than rent it.

Allwyn’s full announcement is available on its investor news page.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission has voted to send FanDuel to an adjudicatory hearing over proxy wagers placed on the account of podcaster Bill Simmons, opening the way for a fine or licence conditions against the state’s largest sportsbook.

Commissioners voted unanimously at their public meeting on 5 November to refer the matter, which the commission’s Investigations and Enforcement Bureau (IEB) has logged as case 2026-SWN-321. The operator named in the filing is BetFair Interactive US LLC, which trades as FanDuel Sportsbook. No hearing date has yet been set.

Twenty-two bets, $21,800 in handle

According to an IEB memo by senior enforcement counsel Zachary Mercer, dated 26 October and included in the commission’s meeting materials, Simmons acknowledged on his podcast on 30 August that he had placed bets on his own FanDuel account through “an acquaintance who was physically present in Massachusetts” while he was out of state. Simmons lives in California, where online sports betting is not legal.

FanDuel subsequently identified 22 wagers totalling $21,800 in handle, placed on 5, 7 and 19 August. The operator voided the bets, took action on the account and reported the matter to the regulator, the memo said. Press reports have identified the acquaintance as the boyfriend of Simmons’ daughter, though the IEB filing does not name the individual.

The bureau is examining potential breaches of section 11(a) of Chapter 23N of the Massachusetts General Laws, the state’s sports wagering statute, and of 205 CMR 248.17, the commission’s rule prohibiting proxy wagering. Mercer told commissioners that only a preliminary review had been completed and that no outcome had been ruled out.

“Obviously, we’ll be digging in on all facets of this and making determinations as the facts guide us,” Mercer said, according to Covers.

Focus on the operator’s controls

Commission chair Jordan Maynard made clear the hearing would focus on FanDuel’s systems rather than on Simmons himself. “I’m more interested in how the operator let something like this happen and the actions they took after it was public,” Maynard said, as reported by CDC Gaming Reports.

Commissioner Eileen O’Brien tied the case to a broader worry for the regulator, saying proxy betting had been “one of the huge issues” in relation to youth and college-age gambling.

Proxy wagering sits at the heart of how US states enforce their geographic boundaries. Licensed sportsbooks rely on geolocation checks to confirm a bettor is physically inside the state, but those checks verify a device, not the person controlling the account. An account holder who relays bets through someone inside the state can sidestep both the location requirement and, in some cases, know-your-customer checks.

A busy enforcement agenda

The FanDuel referral was one of several enforcement items on the 5 November agenda. The IEB also brought a matter against Fanatics over a failure to send required notices to 132 bettors whose wagering limits it changed between 29 July and 7 September, a rule Massachusetts introduced ahead of other states, as well as a separate refer-a-friend bonus breach. BetMGM faced a matter over wagers accepted from customers outside Massachusetts, while Caesars and MGM Springfield faced civil penalty recommendations over bets taken on unauthorised events.

FanDuel has been penalised by the commission before. In March it agreed to a $5,000 civil administrative penalty over a 2023 breach unrelated to proxy betting, waiving its right to a hearing.

The Simmons case has drawn wide attention because of his profile as one of the best-known sports media personalities in the US and his past commercial ties to the betting industry. The adjudicatory hearing will give FanDuel the opportunity to set out its account of how the bets went undetected and what it changed afterwards. The commission can impose fines, licence conditions or other sanctions under Chapter 23N once the hearing concludes.