Hesse pushes back deadline for legal tender
State Ministry of Interior and Sport extends deadline for expressions of interest from legal firms to noon on 10 June
Hesse has made a number of revisions to its document calling for expressions of interest from legal firms to help it fight court cases brought by private operators, extending the deadline for submissions as a result.
The German Land responsible for handling applications for Germany’s 20 sports betting licences has pushed back the deadline by six days. As a result firms looking to represent the state’s Ministry of the Interior and Sport (HMDIS) have until noon at 10 June to state their interest in the brief.
The ministry has also published a series of revisions to its original tender, relaxing a number of the original conditions. Firms with current mandates involving sports or sports betting operators will now be considered, provided they have no mandates relating to firms involved in the licensing process.
A requirement for applicants to have offices within an hour of HMDIS has also been removed to allow any legal firms with experience of procedural and public procurement law to apply.
The tender, launched late last month, stated that only law firms that could demonstrate experience of procedural and procurement law, an understanding of European gambling laws and no current mandates involving sports or sports betting operators.
The HMDIS explained that with “several administrative proceedings “¦ already pending”, it anticipated “approximately 80″ court cases to be launched by unsuccessful licence applicants.
The highest-profile case to date has been a challenge brought against the ministry by BetVictor over its decision to allow just 14 operators to pass to the next stage of the licensing process.
The Administrative Court of Wiesbaden ruled that the awarding of licences was not being carried out in a fair and transparent way, questioning the legality of rejecting an operator that already held a Schleswig-Holstein licence.