Switzerland’s regulated lottery and sports betting market contracted in 2025, with total operator turnover slipping to CHF 3.87 billion and gross player yield declining 3.7% year-on-year. These figures come straight from Gespa, the Swiss Gambling Supervisory Authority.

Market Contraction Across Most Segments

The downturn spread across the board, hitting lotto products, scratch-cards, and sports betting alike. Lotto turnover fell 3.3%. Scratch-card revenues dropped 2.9%. Sports betting contracted 4.4%. Horse-racing pools took the real knock, sliding 13.7% in turnover as traditional PMU operations continue their slow, longer-term decline.

What’s striking is how stable the market’s fundamental composition remained. Lottos and scratch-cards together commanded roughly 75% of gross player yield, with sports betting accounting for about 19%. Terminal-based electronic lottery machines made up the rest, though even this segment experienced a 4.7% revenue decline.

Online Growth Masks Land-Based Weakness

Online channels’ share of gross player yield inched upward to 24% from 23%. On the surface, that looks like digital momentum. But here’s the thing: absolute online revenues actually contracted by 1.7% nationally, whilst land-based operations fell a sharper 4.3%. The shift towards digital is really just a reflection of the bigger drop in physical venues rather than genuine growth in the online channel.

The two major cross-state operators, Swisslos and Loterie Romande, delivered a combined net profit of CHF 814 million, down 4.7% from the prior year. Per capita spend also slipped. Average stakes fell from CHF 438 to CHF 424, and theoretical net spend per resident dropped to CHF 132.

Regulatory Momentum Continues

Despite the market softness, Gespa wasn’t taking things easy. The authority approved 62 new lottery games and 59 game modifications during 2025. Compliance enforcement picked up pace, particularly around age-restriction adherence at land-based outlets, with test purchase audits conducted across the second half of the year.

The regulator’s focus on unlicensed operators stayed intense. Gespa processed five domain blocklists throughout 2025, bringing the cumulative total of blocked foreign gambling domains to 671. Criminal investigation support intensified as well, with the authority reviewing 42 cantonal rulings and assisting in 25 separate investigations linked to illegal operations.

This 2025 contraction arrives roughly six years into the post-2019 regulatory revision that opened the Swiss market to licensed online operators. Market maturation and normalisation appear underway, following the expansion phase that came with liberalisation.

What the team thinks

Carl Mitchell says:

What’s interesting here is that despite the overall contraction, Philippa’s piece rightly flags the shift toward online as a structural play rather than a cyclical blip, which mirrors what we’ve been seeing across European markets for years now. The 3.7% decline in gross player yield isn’t exactly catastrophic when you consider Switzerland’s mature market dynamics and strict regulatory environment, but operators should be watching whether that online growth is simply cannibalizing retail or if there’s genuine new player acquisition happening. From a punter perspective, this kind of regulated consolidation often means tighter margins and less player value, so it’ll be worth monitoring how Swiss operators respond to protect their competitive positioning.