Germany´s Online Gambling Law 2012: Preprogrammed inconsistency

by Dr. Wulf Hambach and Dr. Stefan Bolay

On 9 November 2011, the 22 year old German Pius Heinz won the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas and is now the 2011 Poker World Champion. Press and media celebrate him as a new Boris Becker and compare him with Sebastian Vettel. Pius Heinz himself explained his success with four years of real money online poker experience in Germany. Schleswig-Holstein politician Hans-Joern Arp points out that this shows the absurdity of the past and current gambling regulation in Germany: Pius Heinz became a German hero by doing something that is formally prohibited in Germany (see http://isa-casinos.de/gaming/articles/34372.html).

The following shall show the legal consequences for the gambling regulation in Germany in the year 2012 in case that the other Länder will not approach Schleswig-Holstein’s Gaming Reform Act.

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Comment: Schleswig-Holstein v 15 states: the legal battle turns political

by Dr. Wulf Hambach and Dr. Stefan Bolay

The German State of Schleswig-Holstein recently approved a liberal gambling law, ignoring the wish of the 15 other federal states to agree on a new Interstate Treaty on Gambling (ITG), which advocates tight gambling regulation and a limited number of operators. Dr. Wulf Hambach and Dr. Stefan Bolay, of Hambach & Hambach Rechtsanwälte, analyse the latest developments and discuss how this legal battle has turned into a fierce political debate.
One month after the ratification of the Schleswig-Holstein Gambling Reform Act, on 14 September 2011, which legalises major parts of the online gambling market, Schleswig-Holstein’s leading newspaper Lübecker Nachrichten reported ‘a wave of online gambling operators’ intending to apply for a 2012 remote licence in Schleswig-Holstein and already making deals with regional sports clubs such as VfB Lübeck. What triggered this new wave?

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Kiel Gaming Act gets support from Denmark and from the Liberal Party – Social Democratic Party (SPD) continues its collision course with Brussels

By Dr. Wulf Hambach

Copenhagen/Kiel, in October 2011 – Flashback: 17 December 2010 was a cold pre-Christmas day – whilst outside an icy wind blew around the Kiel parliament building, the conservative-liberal coalition government engaged in a heated debate with the social democrats in the plenary hall. The agitated discussion was triggered during the first reading of the Kiel model act, which is based on the Danish model for the regulation of gaming. It was this path-finding look towards the north which the fathers of the Kiel draft, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) economics expert Hans-Jörn Arp and FPD chief strategist Wolfgang Kubicki, were accused of by the SPD. The criticism in the Kiel parliament was that they had bet on a dead horse. The reason: In autumn 2010, the EU Commission had admitted for examination an EU state aid complaint due to the low taxation of online games in comparison to terrestrial games. In this context, the Danish reform project, which had obtained international praise, initially got caught in the web of the terrestrial casino lobby. … Continue Reading

An Opening To the US Internet Market: How Can I Line Up To Get An Internet Poker License In Nevada and Why Should I?

by Anthony Cabot

The debate over Internet poker in the United States no longer appears to be a question of whether it will become legal, but rather when and how it will become legal. Legalizing Internet gambling is being considered at both the state and Federal levels. Legislation before Congress proposes a Federal scheme for licensing and regulating poker and games of chance. Realistically, however, if Congress passes legislation, it will likely permit Internet poker only. This is because poker, a game with a high-skill component, is perceived as different–both historically and practically–from games of chance. A poker-only Federal regulation scheme would likely leave it up to the states to determine how to legalize, license and regulate games of chance and lottery-style games. Meanwhile, states would be limited if poker is regulated at the Federal level; more than likely, the new Federal laws would preempt each state from adopting its own approach to legalizing, licensing and regulating Internet poker. … Continue Reading

How should we define ‘strict control’?

By Dr Alan Littler and Justin Franssen

Wave upon wave of preliminary  references have been sent to the Court of Justice of the European Union by national courts caught at the intersection between national gambling regulation and the principles upon which the internal market is founded.
Initially, the case-law concerned the mailing of lottery tickets in Schindler  and the operation of slot machines in Läärä,  but with the rise of the internet and the  revolution it sparked within the gambling  industry, gambling has spread like wildfire through the Court’s workload. Gambelli regulation of gambling, yet it would be  unimaginable to argue that gambling is  comparable to other activities from which  the Court has kept a distance, such as  pornography and prostitution.

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