 Online
Poker in Germany
Despite Legal
QuagmireThere will be online poker in Germany despite that nation's outlawing the activity effective January 1, 2008. There is no stopping the Germans from playing online poker. Poker is in Germany's blood. According to the 2008 Addiction Yearbook, between 200,000 and 290,000 Germans regularly play poker on the Internet. In 2006, they were estimated to have spent around 1 million euros gambling online. Deutsche Welle this week illustrates Germany's penchant for poker in a riveting report that focuses on one of its chief poker stars - not to mention - poker legend - Boris Becker. Nine years after retiring from the sport, Becker is now the spokesperson for an online poker website. But, as Deutsche Welle points out, in Germany, it's only legal to gamble for money in casinos, leaving the booming Internet market in a grey area. If it involves money, online gambling is against the law, but so far no one has been charged with the crime. Game providers' servers are located far away in Gibraltar, Malta and the Seychelles, making questions of jurisdiction difficult for prosecutors to answer. Germany's tax authorities have a monopoly on the gambling business and pocket more than half of the industry's earnings as corporate tax. Online gambling, however, remains unregulated and profits circumvent state coffers. All 16 state legislatures in Germany voted by mid-December to approve the new online-betting laws, which the states negotiated after the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 2006 that the former model was unconstitutional. The new rules, which expire at the end of 2011, have drawn criticism from Internet betting companies and lottery brokers like Bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, Fluxx AG and Tipp24 AG. While the German Government is yet to react to the growing epidemic of online poker, they still could. After all, it's only been three months since the law was enacted. They could order Internet service providers to block Web sites of illegal betting operations and banks to stop money transfers to them. The rules' definition of illegal gaming includes placing a bet from German territory over the Web with a company based outside Germany. Clearly, the European Union, which has lashed out at the United States Government for a similar stance related to Internet gambling, has voiced outrage over Germany's move. Yet Germany is far from alone in its quest to abolish online poker and casinos. France, Sweden and Holland are just a handful of European nations that have clashed on the issue of legalized online gambling. Just last week, the industry won a significant battle in the land of tulips and windmills - Holland. The upper house of the Dutch parliament defeated a bill that would have allowed monopoly casino operator Holland Casino to open a gambling Web site on a trial basis, essentially excluding all other similar venues. With the European Poker Tour Grand Finale culminating in Monte Carlo over the next several days, online poker rooms will be looking to capitalize on the German and European markets overall. European focused poker rooms the likes of Chili Poker were offering €10,600 Euro buy-ins to the NLH main event (and a US$20,000 travel package). The event should further raise attention to an unstoppable reality - that poker is here to stay and online poker cannot be quashed. ---- Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher CCostigan@CostiganMedia.com
Originally published
April 9, 2008 10:47
am EST
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