Private lottery providers are suffering from governmental squeeze.

A fire letter from lottery providers to premiers.

The federal states are responsible for licensing private lottery providers in Germany. This is what the State Treaty on Gambling provides. But the federal states obviously see their task primarily in protecting their own state lottery companies. 12 private Lotto offerers made therefore their displeasure now in a fire letter to the Prime Ministers air.

Accordingly, they feel downright harassed by the federal states.

The intended reauthorization of online brokers has now become a de facto ban on the profession,

says the letter. The assignment of the switching licenses would be completely intransparent and the switching commissions were reduced too strongly.

Moreover, the bundling of the Internet activities of all state lottery companies on the one hand provokes lotto.de and the targeted redirection of players to the websites of the individual state lottery companies is a massive preference for the state offers, which should actually be prevented according to the State Treaty on Gambling.

Addiction prevention

Two of the 12 private Lottogesellschaften would stand therefore briefly before the exit. Which are that, that does not come out from the letter however. Only so much that foreign investors would already be ready to take over these providers together with the customers. But foreign companies are no longer subject to state control by German states. The prevention of addiction would be done a disservice in such a way.

Lotto balls © Fiedels – Fotolia.com

The reproaches of the private offerers are not to be rejected completely of the hand naturally. Even companies that have finally received one of the coveted licenses continue to face bureaucratic hurdles. This starts not least with the responsibilities distributed across the countries, which also change every few years. For example, Hesse is responsible for online sports betting and NRW for the advertising permit. And every 36 months, the Deutscher Toto- und Lottobund is led by a different lottery company.

Coupled with worsening commissions, these are of course not too good conditions for a flourishing business of private lottery providers. And this is probably exactly the goal of the lotto companies. The fact that this behavior offends against the gambling interstate contract is apparently all the same to them. After all, they are supposedly in the driver’s seat and decide for themselves who is allowed to get involved in the lottery business.