A third German State Treaty on Gambling has been ratified by the 16 states, the Länder, that make up the Federal Republic.
In this instance it is only an amendment to eliminate the existing limit on the number of sports betting licences and to extend the trial period of the country’s sports betting market, previously hampered by legal action.
The elimination of the limit on the sports betting licences is regarded as a step in the right direction by the industry, but licences issued will only be valid from January 1, 2020, until June 30, 2021. All other aspects of the state treaty on gambling remain unchanged, which is deplored by the industry as "indecisive."
“This decision can only be seen as an interim solution,” said Dirk Quermann (pictured), president of the German Online Casino Association. “It is only a little step in the right direction but other and bigger steps need to be made to regulate the German gambling market.
"The good news is that the prime ministers (of the individual states) know this and they will decide whether to draft a new state treaty (apart from this amendment) for their next conference in June.
“The later decision is the more important one,” he said, pointing out that any new state treaty would need to cover all forms of gambling "in a coherent way."
He added: “In the past few months several Länder, such as Schleswig-Holstein, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, clearly stated that a new regulation needs to include a licensing regime for online casinos to channel the demand for such forms of gambling.”
Previously only 20 licences had been permitted to cover all of Germany and only for an experimental period: 2012 through to mid-2019. This experiment never started because no licences had been granted through legal action.
Now the limit has been removed and the experimental period has been extended and new operators of sports betting may enter the German market in addition to those already tolerated by the authorities.
“It is now more important than ever that the prime ministers work towards the goal of a new state treaty. Of course the industry and its associations, based on the experiences in other regimes within the EU, would be happy to be involved in the process of drafting a new treaty,” said Quermann.
Jens Bader, co-founder of igaming payments company MuchBetter, said that an opportunity has been missed: "This was a big chance to decide the future of online gambling across the German-speaking market, but we’re left with more uncertainty and only a placeholder agreement.
"It’s good that there are no more artificial restrictions on the number of licences awarded to operators, but this vote was far from decisive on other issues including the legality of online gambling, casino and poker."
