In Austria the Ministry of Finance has started the procedures for the assignment of concessions for online gaming and betting. According to local press reports, the award criteria are those provided for by current legislation, although the Council of Ministers has been talking about a new law on gambling for three years.
This means there could be only one license for lotteries and one for online gambling and 12 for casinos.
The current licenses, which all belong to Casinos Austria and the lotteries belonging to them, will not expire before the end of September 2027. However, new assignments could take 45 months (including the deadlines for objections before the various judicial authorities) , and therefore it is necessary to start the award procedure immediately.
Finance Minister Magnus Brunner (ÖVP) has already expressed his discontent with the years-long stalemate. The ÖVP blames this failure on the reluctance of the coalition partners. The crux of the matter would be the limits of slot machines. To better protect players, the Greens argue that the maximum stake should be significantly lower than that proposed by the ÖVP. The ÖVP for its part claims that, according to experts, too low limits would only lead to the illegality of the gambling market.
In the end, the only authorized dealer could be the current one, namely Win2day, which is part of Casinos Austria and which perhaps only represents about a quarter, or at most half of the entire market which in 2022 was estimated at over 410 million euros. The rest is in the hands of several hundred unlicensed but still operational online casinos. The bill, currently parked in the recesses of government buildings, provides for the blocking of the IPs of unauthorized sites.
