Merkur/Bally

I just found out that Merkur and Bally are ceasing gaming operations in Germany, does anyone know anything more specific? I just noticed that stake7 and platinum casino are moving, I think it has something to do with it

Hello Dbac130579,

I did some research and, as I understand it, the facts are as follows:

There are some online casinos that have a license to offer Merkur games, but this license does not explicitly apply to Germany - because online gambling is illegal under German law. (This is in contradiction to EU law, but it goes too far here).
The Gauselmann company, which is behind Merkur, came into the public eye a few weeks ago when the Paradise Paper was published, because it became known that the company also earns through the license fees at the officially illegally offered casinos.

Gauselmann has now asked its licensees (i.e. the casinos) to remove the games from online casinos if the casinos serve the German market but do not have a license here. The Stake7 Casino is mentioned as an example in this context. For example here .

It appears that some casinos have already complied with the request. For example, I can no longer open Merkur games from Germany at Sumaker. It is questionable what happens to sites like drückglück.de that have a license from Schleswig-Holstein. It could be that they are still allowed to offer Merkur games because they have an official license to operate a casino from Germany. However, cherrycasino , for example, has also removed all Merkur games, even though it has a corresponding license.

As is the case with Stake7 and co. continues remains to be seen. Since Gauselmann / Merkur threatens the operator with the entire license withdrawal if the games continue to be offered to German players, the providers certainly do not risk lightly to lose the license for all markets just to continue offering the games in Germany for a short time.

However, there may still be tricks to offer the games anyway. Some Merkur games such as Fishin Frenzy or Eye of Horus originally come from the provider Reel Time Gaming and are only sold in Germany under the name Merkur. In the Platinum Casino these games are now offered with the Reel Time Gaming logo. I don't know whether that has always been the case or whether the providers now want to offer the well-known games under a new name.

At the moment there seems to be a lot of uncertainty and we will have to wait and see what happens.

Best wishes

HardyK

There will probably no longer be any reputable casinos that offer Merkur games for German customers. Unfortunately, the first casinos are also withdrawing Novomatic games from circulation...

More about the background and how you can continue to play some games in our news .