Austria finance ministry expects 20 online gambling licence applicants

Austria's finance ministry expects 20 providers to apply for online gambling licences under the planned reform of the Glücksspielgesetz, it told MeinBezirk in response to a query. The ministry said applicants must be a capital company with a supervisory board, working compliance systems for money laundering and player protection, and share capital of at least €10m.

The federal government agreed the reform at the end of June. Under it, several providers are to be able to obtain an online gambling licence; until now only Österreichische Lotterien, through its win2day platform, has held one, and that runs until October 2027. The review phase began in July and in August the finance ministry sent the draft law to the European Commission. A three-month standstill period bars the law from being adopted, but the parliamentary process can continue.

The draft also sets out a cooling-off phase for providers that have so far operated without an Austrian licence. According to the draft, such companies are to be frozen and must stop their existing offering from 1 January 2027 until a licence is awarded. A provider that does not comply faces an 18-month block on the award of a licence. The ministry said this is intended to ensure a regulated transition into the open licensing system.

Industry representatives have doubts. Only a third of Austrian online players use win2day, with the rest playing at providers holding EU licences, mostly from Malta, including platforms such as bwin, bet365, PokerStars and LeoVegas. The Österreichische Vereinigung für Wetten und Glücksspiel (OVWG) said the monopoly does not sufficiently protect consumers because most players are active on foreign platforms anyway. According to estimates from 2021, Austrian players spend more than €400,000 a day on internationally licensed platforms that hold no licence in the country.

The finance ministry expects a significant increase in the channelling rate, the share of players using legal, Austrian-licensed offerings. It said that from October 2027, when the first licences take effect, a channelling rate of 45% is expected, 60% for 2028, 70% for 2029 and 75% for 2030, with 80% sought in the medium term.

The ministry also expects the reorganisation of the gambling market to reduce the number of claims for losses. It said a legal grey area currently exists because many providers hold no Austrian licence but hold one in the EU, and domestic courts have repeatedly ruled that players can reclaim losses from such providers, with claims often involving amounts in the millions of euros.

Further measures in the reform concern player protection. The government plans a central exclusion register, payment blocking requiring banks, credit card companies and other payment service providers to block payments to unlicensed gambling providers, and deposit limits of €250 a week up to the age of 26 and at most €1,680 a month from age 26. A blacklist of providers the authorities consider to be operating unlawfully in the Austrian market and network blocks are also planned, along with a central exclusion register covering operators and game types and an online gambling supervisory system.

The ministry said the law provides for an evaluation in 2031 examining the data adopted in the impact assessment, both on player protection and on changes in the market.