SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The parliament for the German state of Schleswig-Holstein has confirmed that Germany’s sixteen federal Bundesland (provincial governments) have backed its proposed framework on regulating online gambling services by a majority.
German states will back the adoption of the Schleswig-Holstein provisional framework, allowing operators to extend existing igaming licenses until June 30, 2021.
Proposed last March, the Schleswig-Holstein framework will allow an unlimited number of operators to be able to secure full igaming licenses, taxed at 20 per cent of gross gaming revenues.
Schleswig-Holstein’s extended licensing structure will act as a provisional function for German online gambling stakeholders, as German states work together to form a comprehensive federal gambling frameworks – a directive Germany has pursed over the past decade.
Under its current context, Schleswig-Holstein is the only state to offer full provisions on igaming services, having diverged from the original 2012 inter-state agreement, which outlawed all forms of gambling apart from sports betting.
This May, the German Bundestag forwarded its ratified ‘State Treaty on Gambling’ to the European Commission, which will review whether the framework fits with European business practices and whether Schleswig-Holstein is allowed to run its independent regulatory regime until June 2021.
EC approval of the Treaty could see Germany open its official licensing processes by the end of 2019.
