Germany Online Gambling Law Enforced for First Time

January 14, 2015 by

Germany Online Gambling-lawThe issue of online gambling law is extremely complicated, and anyone who knows much about how it works on an international level can tell you that different countries have extremely different ways of handling things. However, one pattern that comes up is the issue of players preferring to play with “unauthorized” sites that aren’t licensed with the government of the country, province or state they are playing from. Germany online gambling law makes it illegal for people to play with unlicensed sites, and they have convicted someone for the very first time in breaking this law.

First Enforcement of Germany Online Gambling Law

A 25-year-old painter was charged for participating in “unlawful gaming” and convicted. This is the first time someone has been convicted of this charge in Germany. He won over €200,000 playing blackjack and had several large withdrawals due to this. Because these funds came straight into his bank account, it wasn’t hard for law enforcement to get tipped off and start investigating where the funds were coming from. Whether it’s right or wrong for them to do this is beside the point, and this case has some major implications for players all over the world.

A Global Issue

Many players in many countries are dealing with a lose-lose scenario. Either they can play inferior games provided by or licensed by the government and have a sub-par experience, or they can go with unlicensed games which are typically better at risk of being convicted of a crime and having any and all of their winnings taken. A majority of the winnings were taken from this 25-year-old from Germany, and this sets a dangerous precedent since most other countries haven’t convicted players for this type of issue yet either.

It’s going to be particularly interesting to see how this case affects how other countries enforce their similar gambling laws. Canada is a good example of a country that prohibits all online gambling other than the games provided by the provinces, but they do not enforce this, and most provinces achieve a market penetration of less than 20 percent as a result.

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