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Illegal – but if you’re not in Germany, and the webserver is not in Germany (and preferably not anywhere in the EU) there isn’t a whole heck of a lot they can do about it.
Same applies to Dutch, for that matter. But the Dutch are more strict in enforcing these rules, I think.
Spears is right and the German authorities are pretty strict about it too.
You want yourself and your sites be hosted outside of the country if you are targeting that audience.
For our german affiliates, we offer a free hosting solution for them to avoid litigation.
I’ll ask our German division manager more details on this. I know there was something that passed in EU court regarding protectionist business laws in countries as being void or unenforcable.
http://www.beckmannundnorda.de/eughgambelli.html
Here are the details, unfortunatly it’s only in German.
That is the Gambelli ruling. One should be able to search for an English language version, it is quite famous and emphasizes the cooperation of the European Union on this. Gambelli is really an Italian case.
All kinds of European Countries added their opinions to this case as it was being tried.
It is illegal to play if you are a German residing in Germany, or to host anything to do with online gambling, or to advertise it.
Germany has a couple of huge land casinos that pay taxes through the nose. It makes sense for the Germans to try to keep all gambling confined to these so the money flows into the government koffers.
As usually, it’s the money.
I have seen the German tax officials go after people living in the states.
I have not heard of any Germans in gaming being arrested yet, and I do know of a few.
all my .de gambling sites were closed by court order …..
/Janet
That is very interesting. When did that happen?
2 months ago, and I wouldn’t risk putting up any gambling domain with the .de extention, the gov lawyers are all over the place dragging you to court even if the domain was not hosted in germany and I am not from germany, a HUGE wait of time/energy/money
My advise, if you have one, take it off ASAP, it does not worth it !
/Janet
Thank you guys for the information.
Janet, have you thought of using those domains to attract side traffic to online gambling? Like travel to gaming destinations? Just tossing ideas in the hopes that you can recup some money out of the sites.
due to my experience, I would stay away as far as possible from this market, you are considered helping someone to commit a crime, I do not even want to get near this , there are MUCH better markets out there ….
/JanetSorry to hear that it was so bad.
Addition to Spear’s reply:
In The Netherlands, the authorities do nothing! It’s the Dutch Lotto (owned by the government and the only one with a dutch license) who’s sueing everybody that offers online gambling in The Netherlands.
As far as I know, in Germany, it’s the government itself coming after you. So you’ll probably have less chance of being caught, but if you ARE, you are in serious trouble.
Hi,
I’m actually a german citizen and was wondering if you guys can tell me, if it’s illegal for me to advertise gambling, but not targetting germans. Let’s say that I just want to create a gambling portal in english, would that be illegal for me to do?
Thanks,Burgi82
All I can tell you is that several successful people are doing this. None of them have had problems as far as I know, as long as nothing is in German language or domain.
ok, thank you very much for this info!
