Home » F1 Sauber cleared of unauthorized advertising, rules Swiss commission

F1 Sauber cleared of unauthorized advertising, rules Swiss commission

F1 Sauber cleared of unauthorized advertising, rules Swiss commission



Sauber driver Valtteri Bottas of Finland during the qualifying session at the Suzuka Circuit in Suzuka, central Japan, Saturday, April 6, 2024, ahead of Sunday’s Japanese Formula One Grand Prix.


Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved

The Sauber Formula 1 racing team is not engaging in unauthorized advertising for online gambling that is not licensed in Switzerland. This is the conclusion reached by the Swiss Federal Gaming Board, which has discontinued the relevant proceedings.

Sign up to get the latest news from Switzerland directly to your inbox

The case concerned the logo of the online gaming provider “Stake”, as announced by the Federal Gaming Board (FGB) on Tuesday. Sauber displays the sponsor’s logo on its racing cars, racing suits, website, social networks and live broadcasts on Swiss public television, SRF.

+Sauber F1 team unconcerned by reported investigation into gambling sponsorship

This gave rise to the suspicion that Sauber was advertising for the provider of online casino games, which is not licensed in Switzerland. The SFGB therefore initiated an administrative criminal investigation in 2023. It investigated whether there had been a violation of the Federal Gambling Act.

It came to the conclusion that the sponsorship agreement with “Stake” and Sauber’s appearance with the logo should generally be considered advertising. When examining the illegality, the SFGB took into account that Sauber mainly appears internationally and that no appearances with the “Stake” logo take place in Switzerland.

+Winners and losers: sports betting in Switzerland

Sauber also did not run any advertising explicitly aimed at Switzerland. Furthermore, according to the Commission, the “Stake” offering is not accessible in Switzerland. The platform took measures to prevent players from Switzerland from registering on it.

For these reasons, the SFGB is discontinuing the proceedings. However, it stated: “This decision is not a precedent”. It will continue to investigate every suspected case of advertising for unauthorized casino games.

Adapted from German by DeepL/amva

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

car under water

More

Switzerland helps Armenia with flood damage




This content was published on




Heavy rainfall has caused severe flooding in northern Armenia and cost lives. Switzerland dispatched a team of seven engineers to the region.



Read more: Switzerland helps Armenia with flood damage


According to the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (Glamos), at the end of April there was around 31% more snow on all of Switzerland's 1,400 glaciers than the average for the years 2010 to 2020.

More

The glacier melt in the Swiss Alps has begun




This content was published on




The peak of the snow accumulation was most likely reached on Monday, wrote glaciologist Matthias Huss on the social media platform X on Tuesday.



Read more: The glacier melt in the Swiss Alps has begun