Germany is taking a closer look at loot boxes: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has launched a Bundesrat initiative to strengthen youth and player protection. Transparency, warning labels and stricter age ratings are at the heart of the proposal.

From the all-out bans of 2008 via Schleswig-Holstein’s special approach to the landmark Gambling Treaty of 2021: a detailed journey through the shifting regulatory landscape of online gambling in Germany—and the pressing new EU questions raised in 2025.

Hambach & Hambach law firm is proud to once again contribute to The Legal500’s Country Comparative Guides in the area of Gambling Law.

A lot has happened since our last update: On 1 January 2023, the responsibility for the entire gambling licensing process in Germany related to (online) gambling has been transferred to a newly formed “Joint Gambling Supervisory Authority”.

In a recent landmark decision, Netherlands Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State strengthened the rights of skill games providers in the use of in-game loot boxes.

Today, the European Commission announced that it has formally opened a series of infringement proceedings against a number of EU Member States whose laws on gambling appear to be in breach of the rules of the internal market. In doing so, the Commission has sent a reasoned opinion to Sweden which had...

Barcelona/Munich, July 2013. The German federal states could generate additional tax revenue of more than 1.5 billion Euro between 2014 and 2017. This would require neither redistribution nor tax increases. It would merely be necessary to adjust the inter-state treaty on gambling (GlüStV), which has been in force for one year, to market realities.

Poker is a game of chance. This has been the unconsidered opinion of many legal experts for more than 100 years. A blanket judgment such as this, however, neither complies with high court decisions regarding the distinction between games of chance and games of skill, nor does it apply to the poker variant Texas Hold’em, which at present is the most popular form of poker. Proof for this, which had so far been missing, has now been provided in a first large field study in Germany...

The bill of high capacity leisure centres, created in response to the leisure and gambling complex Gran Scala that International Leasure Development (ILD) aims to install in Ontiñena (Huesca), will demand promoters to this kind of developments to have a share capital of 10 million euros and hand in a guarantee.

A historical analysis of a key moment in European gambling regulation. This expert article from 2009 by Rob van der Gaast provides an in-depth look at the liberalization of the French betting market, listing the major operators preparing to enter and the market data from that era.

Members of the Czech Association of Poker Clubs are pushing the Finance Ministry to recognize the game as an official sport, and have enlisted legal representatives from Ernst & Young to aid in their campaign. With poker having surged in local popularity over the past two years – the association estimates that 60,000 Czechs play poker, and roughly 1,000 are organized into 19 official clubs across the country...

Brian and Wendy Wilshaw are selling their Devon house and grounds, which they say is worth GBP 1m, in a GBP 25-per-entry competition. They have said that their legal advisors have cleared the competition, but one gambling law expert has raised questions about the legality of the plan. Antoinette Jucker is a gambling law expert with Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, and she thinks the competition is against the law.