Switzerland is one of Europe’s wealthiest countries, but how much of that money actually goes into gambling?
There is no single official statistic showing exactly how many Swiss gamblers spend per month on online gambling. However, government statistics, academic research and data from a gambling affiliate in Switzerland provide some useful benchmarks.
The most recent figures from Switzerland’s gambling regulator, Gespa, provide a useful starting point.
In 2025, Swiss residents generated 4.12 billion EUR in turnover from large-scale lotteries and sports betting. Players received 2.84 billion EUR in winnings, resulting in gross gaming revenue of around 1.28 billion EUR. Gespa calculates that this represented net expenditure of 123 EUR per inhabitant for the year.
That works out at approximately 11 EUR per month per resident.
But there is an important catch: this is not the amount an active gambler spends every month. It is an average across the entire population, including people who do not gamble.
What about actual gamblers?
One of the more useful pieces of evidence comes from academic research based on the Swiss Health Survey.
A study published in the Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics examined gambling expenditure using Swiss Health Survey data. Among respondents who had gambled and reported positive net expenditure, the researchers found an average monthly gambling expenditure of 54 EUR.
That study is older (the underlying survey data came from 2007) so it should not be presented as a current 2026 spending figure.
Nevertheless, it provides an important historical benchmark: once people who never gamble are removed from the calculation, average monthly expenditure rises substantially.
Younger Swiss men show a similar pattern
More recent academic research offers another perspective.
A study of more than 5,000 young Swiss men examined gambling behaviour and monthly spending. Among participants who gambled, the average amount gambled was 72 EUR per month. For the broader sample, including those who did not gamble, the average was 20 EUR.
The distribution was heavily concentrated at the lower end.
Among the gamblers in the study:
- 74% reported gambling 1–50 EUR per month
- 12.8% reported 51–100 EUR
- 6.9% reported 101–200 EUR
- 3.9% reported 201–500 EUR
- 1.3% reported 501–1,000 EUR
- 0.7% reported more than 1,000 EUR
This is an important reminder that an “average” can conceal a very wide range of behaviour. A relatively small group of high-spending gamblers can pull the mean upwards.
The missing piece: Switzerland’s grey gambling market
There is another part of the Swiss gambling picture that is much harder to quantify: the unregulated grey market. There is no reliable public figure for the size of this grey market or the amount wagered through it, meaning official gambling-spending statistics may not capture the full picture.
According to the data provided by Mysportwetten.de/ch/, between 5 to 20 thousand people in Switzerland are searching for betting sites without a licence every month. Given that information, we should assume that the average Swiss gamblers spend substantially more money on bets then what official data reports.
Betting 500 EUR does not ncessarily mean losing 500 EUR
Imagine a player places 500 EUR worth of bets during a month and receives 450 EUR back in winnings.
Their turnover would be 500, but their net loss would be 50.
If another player wagers 500 EUR and wins 700 EUR, that player has technically generated 500 EUR in betting turnover while finishing the month 200 EUR ahead.
For this reason, researchers and regulators often use different measures when describing gambling behaviour.
The amount wagered, gross gaming revenue, net expenditure and individual losses are not interchangeable.
Perhaps the most important lesson from the available data is that there is no typical gambling budget that applies to everyone. Most gamblers appear to spend relatively modest amounts, while a much smaller group accounts for disproportionately high spending. No matter what the numbers are, it is safe to say that Swiss gamblers are spending a lot more money on online betting than gamblers in most other countries. And for that reason, Switzerland, being a small country with a population of only 9 million people, has a gambling market that is worth billions of euros.