Austrian court deems lottery tender constitutional
Complaint by three operators including bet-at-home argued that award of 15-year licence to Ãsterreichische Lotterien GmbH was unconstitutional.
Austria’s Constitutional Court has rejected complaints by three private operators over the tender process for the awarding of the country’s lottery licence to Ãsterreichische Lotterien GmbH, saying it did not contravene the country’s constitution.
The 15-year licence was originally awarded to Ãsterreichische Lotterien, a subsidiary of Casinos Austria AG, in October 2011 by the Austrian Ministry of Finance, only for the decision to be contested by three other applicants including Betclic Everest brand bet-at-home, SMS game provider Lotelo and Malta-based Bandal.
Under the terms of legislation, Ãsterreichische Lotterien is permitted to offer online casino games, poker and slots through its Win2Day.at site, with all other forms of egaming banned in the country.
The three complainants disputed the tender process calling into question both the tender process and Austrian gambling legislation and argued that the requirement for applicants to have a minimum registered capital of 109m “ Ãsterreichische Lotterien has exactly 110m in registered capital “ suggested current regulation is tailored for the monopoly operator.
However, the Constitutional Court dismissed the complaints, describing regulation and the awarding of the licence to be “appropriate and justified.”
The case marks a fresh setback for bet-at-home after a previous attempt to have the operator’s Maltese online gambling licence recognised by the Austrian authorities was rejected by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in September 2011. This came a year after the European court criticised a requirement for all operators offering gambling in Austria to be headquartered in the country, describing it as in contravention of EU law.
Bet-at-home has since been forced to pay a player 0.95m to cover his online roulette losses , having been judged to have offered the game illegally, and joint-managing director Jochen Dickinger stepped down from his post in October last year.