iGB: Why won’t the ECJ settle the player-losses fight?

By Martin Bjoerck (iGB)

Despite years of referrals and rulings, the EU’s top court continues to defer to national judges, leaving operator liability and player-loss claims unresolved across Germany, Austria and beyond.

For years, Europe’s gambling industry looked towards Luxembourg in the hope that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) could deliver a decisive answer to one of the sector’s most expensive and politically charged disputes: whether players should be entitled to recover losses incurred with operators that were licensed in one EU member state but lacked authorisation in another. 

Instead, over the course of the last 12 months the court has largely avoided answering the bigger questions operators, investors and litigators hoped would finally be settled. Through a succession of rulings, opinions and referrals concerning German and Austrian player-losses claims the ECJ has only clarified certain legal principles.

Rather than imposing a uniform European solution, the ECJ has repeatedly deferred to national and regional courts, effectively telling them to interpret their own gambling laws to determine the consequences of these cases.

The result is a paradox. After years of litigation and multiple referrals to Europe’s highest court, the industry may have more guidance than before – but not necessarily more certainty. 

hat uncertainty is now shaping everything from Germany’s player-losses market and Austria’s restitution claims, to Malta’s controversial efforts to shield locally licensed operators from foreign judgments. It is also reviving a debate about whether Europe’s fragmented gambling regime can continue to function without some degree of harmonisation?

IBTimes: The Prediction Market That Doesn’t Take Your Money

By David Thompson, Published 05/06/26

In January, Polymarket processed roughly four million euros in wagers on the Portuguese presidential election in the hours before results were announced. Within forty-eight hours, the country’s gambling regulator ordered the platform to wind down its operations in Portugal. Hungary’s regulator blocked the domain entirely the same week. By the end of the month, Polymarket had been progressively banned, restricted, or threatened with enforcement action across more than a dozen European jurisdictions, including Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Read the whole article here.

iGB: Is Germany showing green shoots as Interstate Treaty review marches on?

By Martin Bjoerck (iGB)

A positive shift in Germany’s Interstate Treaty review could signal good news for neighbouring markets being stifled by tightened gambling rules.

Key takeaways:

• Germany’s Interstate Treaty for Gambling (GlüStV 2021) review is underway and must be completed by 31 December 2026. The key question is whether strict rules have achieved their goals.
• Tight regulations and a 5.3% stake tax have driven players to the black market. Subsequently, policymakers are now reconsidering the framework following weakened channelisation.
• Major reform is unlikely. But targeted changes could signal to other struggling European markets that change, in favour of the sector, is possible.

Read the whole article on iGB.

IMGL Magazine: The future of online gambling regulation in the EU: From fragmentation to functional governance

EFFECTIVE HARMONIZATION IN EUROPEAN GAMBLING REGULATION MAY BE CLOSER THAN IT
SEEMS ARGUE WULF HAMBACH, STEFANIE FUCHS-RAICHER , AND CHRISTINA KIRICHENKO

Europe’s patchwork of regulation has long been a
bugbear of licensed operators. They point to the
unjustified cost and friction of doing business across
27 member states who each insist on creating their own
legal environment. Harmonization seems like a political and
practical impossibility, but is that actually the case?

iGB: Can prediction markets crack Europe’s regulatory wall?

By Martin Bjoerck (iGB)

As prediction markets boom in the US, European regulators move swiftly to block them, exposing a widening a transatlantic divide over whether they are considered financial innovation or simply unlicensed gambling.

In 2024, as Americans placed billions of dollars on the outcome of their presidential election, a curious new financial spectacle unfolded online. On prediction market platform Polymarket, traders wagered not through traditional bets but through contracts priced like financial assets, reflecting the crowd’s collective view of Donald Trump’s electoral chances. The market proved uncannily prescient, correctly forecasting the result before many pollsters did.