The European Commission is putting pressure on the German online gaming industry to open itself up to foreign competition. We’ve seen similar pressure on the likes of France, Sweden and Greece with little to really cheer about in the online bingo industry.

However, the curiously named Legal Gaming in Europe Summit to be held in Germany in the near future is producing some novel preliminary ideas about the future of the German market which may be of interest to some bingo online operators and online bingo halls.

Central to the discussion are the views by German gaming lawyer, one Dr Wulf Hambach of Hambach & Hambach, who is suggesting that skill games and entertainment portals may be the means by which online gaming operators could crack the German market.

Dr Hambach does however provide a caveat to his ideas by pointing out that the inconsistent and patchwork nature of the legal German gambling industry means potential non-German operators need to seek out the relevant niches not covered by that country’s monopoly laws in order to prosper.

In essence, Dr Hambach is saying any free online bingo operator looking to offer online bingo games to the german public needs to thoroughly research the German State Gambling Treaty 2008. The key seems to be in looking more closely at the ‘skills games’ part of the legislation, but I guess we’ll have to wait for the conference to get any real facts on that.

However, Dr Hambach goes on to say rather encouragingly:

“The enforceability of the new State Gambling Treaty 2008 means that it is hard to predict what will happen in the German market over the next 12 months. With the EC and several political groups such as the Liberals opposing the gambling monopoly approach, my guess is that the state monopoly will continue to fight against the private gambling industry in the short-term but will lose the monopoly vs. liberalisation battle in the long-term.” (my emphasis added)

So, in a nutshell, is there scope for enlarging the online bingo population through a push into the German market? Keep an eye on this blog and we’ll keep you informed as to how things develop over there and if there is any real benefit in targeting German people who want to play online bingo.

Written by John Witherspoon – How about playing bingo online? The best free online bingo games are just one click away.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 9:09 am and is filed under Online Bingo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.