Germany is claiming success in its efforts to impose a new sports betting licensing regime, although it failed to show its work on how it calculated this success.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Ministry of the Interior and Sport in the German state of Hesse\u00a0announced<\/strong>\u00a0that it had received 11 applications for new sports betting licenses while another seven operators had offered \u201cbinding announcements\u201d of their intention to submit their applications \u201cat short notice\u201d to the Regional Council of Darmstadt.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s notoriously fractious states agreed to a\u00a0stopgap federal gambling treaty<\/strong>\u00a0last spring that would open up the country\u2019s sports betting market but only until July 1, 2021, by which time the states hope to reach agreement on a more permanent solution.<\/p>\n Hesse\u2019s Interior Minister\u00a0Peter Beuth\u00a0<\/strong>issued a warning<\/strong>\u00a0in December noting that not a single new license application had been received ahead of the January 1, 2020 launch of the new temporary betting regime. Beuth \u201curgently\u201d warned would-be licensees that they would be \u201cliable to prosecution\u201d if they didn\u2019t get their applications in ASAP.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Beuth (pictured) claimed that the subsequent flood of license applications means that the process was \u201cpicking up speed.\u201d Beuth also claimed that the number of applications meant that the regulator had \u201cchanneled the sports betting market from the formally illegal market to providers willing to legalize at 75%.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear on what exactly Heuth is basing that 75% figure, which would appear to put the total number of betting operators taking wagers from German punters at 24. But Germany\u2019s previously botched licensing regime\u00a0selected 20 companies<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 out of 35 applicants \u2013 to receive betting licenses, although these licenses were never actually awarded due to the\u00a0entire licensing regime falling apart<\/strong>\u00a0amid legal challenges.<\/p>\n Heuth may have been trying to claim that 75% of German sports bettors would eventually be dealing exclusively with locally licensed operators, although it would have been difficult for Heuth to know what share of the market was held by each of the new license applicants.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s new betting rules have some pretty severe limitations, including no in-play betting, a \u20ac1k monthly betting cap and a 5% tax on betting turnover. Next door in Poland, the government imposes a similarly strict legal betting regime, and new statistics show grey\/black operators\u00a0control 60% of the market<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Hesse and a few other more liberally minded German states are hoping to loosen some of the stopgap treaty\u2019s rules when the permanent treaty is crafted. Among the desired changes is approval of online casino products, which are currently banned under the stopgap treaty and betting license applicants have been instructed to\u00a0cease offering these products<\/strong>\u00a0to German customers or their license will be rejected.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n