Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the cabinet chose a project with an unrestricted licence from among five applications in Zurich.
A project for a casino with a restricted licence in the town of Neuchâtel was also approved.
Sommaruga said both projects fulfilled all the necessary criteria, including quality management, capital, security, anti-money laundering and social measures.
Both casinos, still to be formally granted licences, are expected to open their doors to the public next year.
This means Switzerland will have eight A casinos – with an unrestricted licence that allows many different table games, slot machines and with no real capping on maximum bets – and 13 casinos with a B licence.
The applicants for the Zurich casino pledged to make the new gaming establishment into a top entertainment venue for tourists.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Casinos blame smoking bans for lost revenue
This content was published on
The association has called on the government to impose restrictions for online gambling to put them on par with casinos. The 19 licensed establishments made a total of SFr936 million ($853 million) and recorded 5.4 million clients in 2009. Most of the benefits, which go the state old-age pension scheme, were made at gambling machines;…
This content was published on
swissinfo.ch put that question to psychoanalyst and long-time gambling critic Mario Gmür on the occasion of the second biggest take in the nearly 40-year history of the Swiss lottery. swissinfo.ch: Everyone would like to win a million in the lottery. Does happiness follow hitting the jackpot? Mario Gmür: It means happiness in so far as…
This content was published on
Five years after the first Swiss casinos opened for business, almost 17,000 people have been banned from playing in the country’s 19 gambling houses, mostly for addiction reasons. Casinos have a legal obligation to work to prevent gambling addiction. swissinfo visited a casino on a midweek afternoon to see the everyday players the law aims…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.