North Rhine-Westphalia to grant five online casino licences

North Rhine-Westphalia will become only the second German state to licence online casino gaming.

North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous of Germany’s 16 federal states, has announced that it will grant five online casino licences under the country’s Fourth Interstate Gambling Treaty, which came into effect last July. It becomes only the second state to do so, following Schleswig-Holstein in the north.

Germany’s new federal gambling legislation allows online slots and sports betting but lets each individual state decide whether to grant licences to offer online casino table games. States can choose between granting a monopoly on online table games, normally falling to the state lottery, or to issue the same number of licences as the number of land-based casinos in the state.

The North Rhine-Westphalia Landtag has said it will offer five licences and that it has drawn up rules on player protection and taxes.

The executive of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt has launched the website for the country’s new federal regulator, Gemeinsamen Glücksspielbehörde der Länder (GGL – The German Federal States’ Joint Gambling Authority).

The GGL says that 110 staff will be required by the agency and that it will soon announce 50 new job advertisements on its careers page. It must finalise its senior management and administrative structures in time to be fully operational for January 1 2023.

Focusgn.com