⚽️FIFA’s NFT Fiasco: When Soccer Meets Swiss Spite! 😂

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In the quiet halls of Geneva, where bureaucracy and bureaucracy alone reign supreme, the Swiss Gambling Supervisory Authority (Gespa) has unleashed a tempest of moral outrage against FIFA, that most modern of villains, for its audacity to peddle “FIFA Collect,” a blockchain-based ticketing platform. One might call it a digital bonfire of the absurd, where NFTs-those ghostly tokens of the metaverse-are sold as gateways to the 2026 World Cup, a spectacle that will likely be played in stadiums still haunted by the ghosts of tax-dodging sponsors.

Gespa, with the solemnity of a monk denouncing a tavern, declared these NFTs “illegal” under Swiss law, a decree that seems less about justice and more about Switzerland’s eternal quest to out-regulate itself. Earlier this month, they had already summoned the spirit of preliminary investigation, asking whether these tokens might qualify as gambling, a classification that would make even the most stoic Swiss banker blush.

According to the indomitable Gespa, FIFA Collect is a carnival of vices: NFT drops, challenges, and competitions requiring users to pay for the privilege of possibly winning money. Some of these activities, they claim, resemble lotteries; others, sports betting. The pièce de résistance? The “Right to Final” token, a contraption so cunning it allows fans to purchase a ticket to the World Cup final only if their chosen team qualifies-a gamble that, in the spirit of Tolstoyan irony, may be more about national pride than probability.

Gespa, ever the dutiful sentinel of Swiss virtue, insists it must alert law enforcement whenever it suspects gambling law violations. Thus, the case now wends its way to the prosecutor’s office, where the question of formal charges will be debated with the gravity of a man choosing his last meal in prison. “From a gambling law perspective,” Gespa intoned, “the offers in question are partly lotteries and partly sports betting.” A statement so profound it could be carved into a monument for the absurd.

FIFA, meanwhile, remains silent, a decision that speaks volumes. Perhaps they are calculating the odds of this all being a footnote in their next quarterly report. Or perhaps they are simply waiting for the storm to pass, as one does when the world is watching, and the only thing more unpredictable than a World Cup match is Swiss regulatory zeal.

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2025-10-17 15:18