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Germany’s Federal Court of Justice is preparing to rule on a case of a gambler seeking a refund for losing sports bets made before legalisation, and its press release suggests it may plan to favour the player.
A gambler who was not named is seeking refunds on 2018 losses of €12,000, plus interest, claiming that their bets with an Austrian-based online gambling provider were invalid because sports betting was not yet legalised.
A hearing is scheduled for May 2.
In its release, the first civil senate of the court in Karlsruhe noted that the plaintiff claims the operator violated regulations from the 2012 state treaty on gambling.
Those rules included €1,000 monthly limits on stakes and limits on cash-out functions.
It also cites another provision in German law: “A legal transaction that violates a legal prohibition is void unless the law states otherwise,” the court wrote in a press release issued on March 15.
According to attorney Thomas Schopf, who represented the plaintiff in lower courts, the preliminary statement from the court suggests that it plans to rule in favour of the player.
“A real tsunami is likely to hit the entire sports-betting industry,” he wrote on the anwalt.de website.
He said the defendant is Betano, owned by Kaizen Gaming.
An email to Kaizen requesting comment was not answered in time for deadline.
The German Press Association said it has obtained the unpublished 25-page ruling in which contracts between player and operator are likely to be void because of the treaty rules, therefore giving the player a claim for reimbursement.
In Austria, online casino operators have had to shell out hundreds of millions of euros after Austria’s Supreme Court ruled that the country’s online casino monopoly was compatible with European Union law.
In Germany, the 2012 interstate gambling treaty was never fully implemented, but ambiguity about German gambling licences ended with enactment of the interstate gambling treaty that took effect in 2021.
A gambling refund case involving Tipico was scheduled to be heard before the Federal Court of Justice on March 7, but it was suspended several days before the court date, as both parties were in settlement talks.
