Paf has reached an agreement with Meta to launch a pilot project aimed at identifying unlicensed gambling operators advertising on the platform in Switzerland.
Under the arrangement, Paf will share licence documents and URLs covering both operators and affiliates, giving Meta a clearer picture of which advertisers are licensed in the Swiss market.
The goal is to build a model that can later be scaled up to additional markets, with work set to begin shortly.
Jesper Eliasson, Chief Business Development Officer at Paf, presented the project at the SBC Summit in Lisbon.
He said unlicensed operators work systematically to get around social media platforms' controls, and that the patchwork of licences across Europe makes it difficult to establish who is actually behind an advertisement.
He added: "The licence can come from somewhere entirely different, and in that tangle of jurisdictions it is hard to spot. That is why we are focusing on Switzerland, to see whether we can build a model that can then be scaled up."
He also stated that cooperation with platforms alone is not enough, and that regulators also need to use tools including cease and desist letters, cross-border cooperation between authorities including in the United States, and the ability to freeze the assets of operators that target regulated markets without a licence.
"We can share data and have good conversations with the platforms, but that does not take us all the way. The authorities need to use their tools, cease and desist letters, cooperation across borders and the possibility of freezing assets," said Eliasson.
According to him, stricter product rules alone do not solve the problem, since overly restrictive rules can push players toward unregulated sites elsewhere online.
Paf has recently acquired Bell Casino AB, a company that provides gaming services on board around 50 vessels operating in Sweden, Germany, Poland, the Baltic countries, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands
