The Halle Administrative Court in Germany has said in a ruling this week that lottery addiction “essentially does not exist”, which now lets lottery brokerage services like Tipp24 resume regular business as the state of Saxony-Anhalt finally withdrew its appeals.
The Halle administrative court has declared all restrictions of the German State Treaty on Gaming (GlüStV) inapplicable for private lottery brokers such as Tipp24. This includes being banned from the Internet, the requirement for permission to broker lotteries on the Internet as well as the ban against advertising. With its ruling, the court followed the guidelines of the European Court of Justice (EuGH), which had declared the material restrictions of the GlüStV inapplicable due to a lack of coherence and system on 8 September 2010.
Prior to reaching this conclusion, the court consulted some 100 treatment clinics as well as all custody courts in Germany about the significance of the lottery in the context of gaming addiction.
The court said that such a ban on private operators could be justified in order to combat gambling addiction, but not in the absence of evidence that lotteries pose such a risk.
“The judgement confirms our long-standing experience that there are no risks associated with the marketing of a lottery,” said Tipp24 CEO Dr Hans Cornehl in the press release. “And therefore there is no longer any reason for imposing unnecessary restrictions on the private brokering of state lotteries,” added Cornehl.
