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Germany – Black market could have a ‘free run’ in Germany, warns DAW

By - 4 February 2021

With up to 80 per cent of the arcade licenses in Baden-Württemberg threatened with closure, the German slot machine industry is looking to the future with concern as 8,000 jobs in the country are ‘acutely at risk.’

New minimum distance laws keeping a 500m distance between state-licensed gambling halls and children’s and youth facilities. While the machine industry in Baden-Württemberg is already threatened by this, the state parliament wants to ratify the State Treaty on Gambling in 2021 in its plenary session and create the basis for the legalisation of previously illegal online gambling on July 1. Much to the annoyance of the umbrella organisation Die Deutsche Automatenwirtschaft eV (DAW) and the Automaten-Verband Baden-Württemberg eV.

“The legal range of games in Baden-Württemberg is threatened with serious damage. This means that the important channelling task, the task of directing people’s need to play in orderly and legal channels,is in great danger,” warned DAW- Spokesman for the board of directors Georg Stecker. “Because without a sufficiently attractive legal offer, the black market has a free run. The digital age requires modern regulation that actually takes youth and player protection seriously. The idea of ​​minimum distances reveals a regulatory logic that stems from a pre-digital era. Playing on the Internet has long since fundamentally changed the gaming market and has finally reduced the minimum distances for arcades to absurdity.”

The DAW board spokesman wants commercial slot machines in Baden-Württemberg to be regulated according to qualitative criteria instead of using a folding rule. Only qualitative regulation strengthens the protection of young people and players and preserves proper operations and thousands of jobs.

AVBWBoard member Dirk Fischer added: “The entrepreneurial existence of hundreds of companies across the country is acutely threatened. Family businesses, which are often run by the 2nd or 3rd generation, are threatened with extinction in the midst of one of the worst economic crises in post-war history. June 30 must not become the guillotine of legal games on offer. Our operations and our employees need a secure future.”

Mr. Fischer considers it ‘absurd’ that state-licensed gambling halls are threatened with massive closure due to minimum distances that have to be adhered to, while online gambling is legalised throughout Germany. “The sense of minimum distances in gambling halls does not make sense to me, after all, everyone will soon be able to legally play practically the same games on their smartphone, on the bus, at school, at home on the sofa or in line at the supermarket.”

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