•  Inapplicability of German gaming laws confirmed
•  First judgment on online lotto: No permission required for brokerage

On November 11, the Halle administrative court has declared central restrictions of the German State Treaty on Games of Chance (Glücksspiel-Staatsvertrag; GlüStV) to be inapplicable and determined that no permission for brokerage of lotteries – in particular 'Lotto 6 aus 49' – on the Internet is required.  In so doing, the court is following the guidelines of the European Court of Justice. It had already declared central restrictions of the GlüStV as inapplicable on 8 September 2010, due to a lack of coherence and consistency.

Tipp24 SE had sued to establish freedom from procuring permission for the online brokerage of lotteries in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. This suit has now been upheld by the administrative court of Halle. The court referred in its arguments to the inconsistent regulation of the various gaming sectors. For instance, commercial automated games and horse-racing bets are considerably more liberally regulated than the lottery area despite proven higher risks of addiction. In this regard, the court also posed the question of whether lotteries with at most two drawings per week could even result in a relevant risk of addiction. The administrative court had questioned all custody courts of Germany as well as around 100 specialised clinics as to the importance of the lottery within the context of gaming addiction. In the analysis of the results attained from this, Professor Stöver, Director of the Institute for Addiction Research of the Technical University of Frankfurt am Main, determined that lottery games in and of themselves do not account for any significant addiction problems.

Dr Hans Cornehl, CEO of Tipp24 SE: 'A very positive decision for Tipp24. The court not only fully upheld our suit, it also shares our repeatedly expressed view that lottery addiction simply does not exist. With this initial essential decision by a German court, after the most recent decisions of the European Court of Justice on the German gaming laws, we see ourselves confirmed in our plan to resume business in Germany as soon as possible.' 

A written decision is not yet available.

About Tipp24 SE: Tipp24 SE (formerly Tipp24 AG) was founded in September 1999 and holds equity interests in a number of companies in Spain, Italy and the UK, which enable participation in lottery-based games via the Internet, especially via the websites www.ventura24.es, www.giochi24.it, www.mylotto24.co.uk and www.tipp24.com. In Germany, Tipp24 Entertainment GmbH operates the games platform www.tipp24games.de. From its foundation to the end of 2008, Tipp24 SE brokered tickets worth over 1.5 billion euros to the state lottery companies – in recent years over 330 million euros annually. Following its successful IPO in 2005 (Prime Standard), the company was admitted to the SDAX index in June 2009 and has been trading as a European public limited company since December 2009.

Press contact:
Tipp24 SE
Andrea Fratini
Head of Media and Public Relations
Phone: +49 40 32 55 33-660
Fax: +49 40 32 55 33-5600
E-Mail: presse@tipp24.de
Internet: www.tipp24-se.de/presse