Legislation

Germany – German Sports Betting Association welcomes transition for new State Treaty on Gaming

By Phil - 5 October 2020

Prime Ministers of the various states in Germany, deciding to tolerate online gambling from October 15 2020 if strict guidelines are observed.

In doing so, they create a smooth transition to the new State Treaty on Gaming in 2021, which regulates these games for the first time in Germany. The German Sports Betting Association, which has long advocated such a transitional regulation, praises the decision published today, but criticises the unrealistically tight implementation deadline. The providers should meet numerous complicated technical requirements within a few days.

The new State Treaty on Gaming will regulate the long-established markets for virtual slot machine games, casino games and poker on the Internet from July 1, 2021. The transitional regulation , which will apply from mid-October , aims to create legal certainty now. Sports betting providers and their customers also benefit: particularly popular live bets – such as the bet on the next goal – should be offered and advertised on a permanent basis according to the will of the heads of government.

DSWV President Mathias Dahms said: “The opening of the online gambling market is a politically decided matter and we expressly welcome this. It is therefore logical to make the transition to the new regulation in 2021 as smooth as possible. Player protection would be a disservice if secure offers had to be switched off temporarily, only to be restarted in a few months. The migration of existing customers to the black market would make the start in a regulated market unnecessarily difficult. ”

The fact that the transitional regulation will nevertheless cause problems is due to the disproportionately short implementation deadlines for IT and player protection requirements. Because several federal states were on the brakes for weeks, the providers only found out on October 1, 2020, just two weeks before the deadline, which specific technical requirements were placed on the tolerance of their offers. Furthermore, there are no contact persons to clarify detailed technical questions with the authorities, as the responsibilities have not been clarified. At the same time, however, several gaming supervisory authorities in the federal states are announcing the toughest possible punishment for any rule violation from day one – up to and including the exclusion of the provider from future licensing procedures.

Mathias Dahms suspects that this is due to political calculations of individual dissatisfied countries.

He added: “An implementation period of only two weeks for complex IT projects is an impossibility. Under normal conditions, such a process takes a time frame of several months. Anyone who deals with the matter knows that. In some federal states, however, the frustration over the new regulation of the gambling sector seems to be limitless. Apparently, it should be made as difficult as possible for private gaming providers to meet state requirements and obtain licenses. That is why the decision on tolerance criteria was delayed for so long.”