Bet that… you lose most of your bets by a huge margin?
A valid sports betting license does not protect against punishment. While previously only providers without a valid license were legally put on the spot and obliged to make repayments to gambling customers, the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court (OLG) now imposed a corresponding penalty on a provider at the end of October, even though he was able to show “valid papers”. The reason for this novelty, which is associated with the name bet 365: The provider violated official rules for player protection, in particular disregarding the 1,000 euro limit. The plaintiff from the Heilbronn district was allowed to gamble away significantly more than 1,000 euros per month. Over a period of six years, he gambled away 2,700 euros a month. The court sentenced the company to repay a total of 280,000 euros. Legally interesting: The process also affects the three months in which the company had a license to do business in Germany.
The ruling from Stuttgart is groundbreaking, 68 pages long and meticulously reasoned. After that, every provider can be held liable and every gambler can successfully sue for at least part of their losses, provided that the provider can prove that they do not comply or have complied with important rules for player protection. A view that can be understood as a clear warning for all sports betting providers. If other OLGs also see it that way, it could trigger a nationwide avalanche of litigation. In this country, around two dozen licensed companies were allowed to operate their business relatively unmolested in the shadow of an estimated more than 5,000 illegal online gambling portals. So far.
While the “gambling epidemic” in this country is faced with increasingly higher and more effective legal hurdles to protect gamblers, Brazil wants to go even further. The South American “gambling nation” is a prime example of where a society that is confronted with increasingly sophisticated, aggressive sports betting offers can end up. Since sports betting was legalized there in 2018, business has been booming – and dragging one family after another into the financial abyss. Addiction is widespread. Now President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is about to completely ban online betting.
According to Lula, it is completely unacceptable for low-income families dependent on the state to provide financial assistance for sports betting. According to the Brazilian Central Bank, social security recipients had spent around $550 million in this way in August 2024 alone. On October 3, 2024, Lula submitted to his government cabinet the question of whether these families should be officially banned from betting. A decision is still pending.
The Brazilian example shows a frightening trend that critics in Germany have been warning about for years. According to official information, the sports betting industry recorded annual sales of 8.2 billion euros in the Federal Republic in 2022. Ten years ago, around 400,000 people were considered addicted to betting, but the number of people risking their homes has now risen to around 1.3 million. One in three of them takes part in live sports betting, according to Burkhard Blienert, Federal Government Commissioner for Addiction and Drug Issues.
People with a migrant background and young men who think they know their way around the world of football are particularly vulnerable. The Bavarian Academy for Addiction and Health Issues ruled five years ago that this was a fatal, sometimes fatal form of overestimation of one’s own abilities. People with pathological gambling behavior therefore have a high risk of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts.
