The Swiss Gambling Supervisory Authority on Friday filed a criminal complaint against football’s world governing body, Switzerland-based FIFA, over an online platform for trading digital football collectibles.
The platform encourages users to collect and trade blockchain-based non-fungible tokens, or NFT, in return for special access to buy FIFA World Cup tickets.
“During the investigation, suspicions were confirmed that collect.fifa.com offers gambling services that are not licensed in Switzerland and are therefore illegal,” the regulator said in a statement.
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The watchdog raised concern that participation in the competitions was “only possible in exchange for a monetary stake, with monetary benefits to be won.” It added that winning a prize depended on random draws.
“From a gambling law perspective, the offers in question are partly lotteries and partly sports betting,” it stated.
It said it was for law enforcement authorities to investigate the complaint against FIFA, which is headquartered in Zurich.
(Reuters)
