casino legal issues in germany

In March the German Supreme Court published the long awaited ruling. A bit of history: About 2 years ago, their was the Gambelli verdict from the European Supreme Court. An Italian bookie took bets for a UK betting house, the Italian accused him of taking illegal bets for a company that don’t have an Italian gaming licence. Gambelli took it to the European Supreme Court and they overruled the Italians > free trading of service within European Union and the UK based Company has a legal UK gaming licence.

After Gambelli, several attempts have been made to break the monopoly in Germany and open the market for European based sports betting companies. Guess what? I didn’t work, the German Supreme court ruling went conservative: no foreign companies allowed, the monopoly stays! Further, prevention of underage and compulsive gambling needs to be improved.

Fact is: nothing has changed for an affiliate in the German speaking market! You still need to host and register your sites outside of Germany (or Switzerland, or Austria), there hasn’t been and are still no media buying options. You need to optimize your site only for Google - google.de (for Germany), google.ch (Switzerland) and google.at (Austria). By the way Austrians spend 4 more on gambling than Germans. Content needs to be in a proper German, it’s not good enough just using an online translator.