If you have grown up with online-only casino sites you might not know any of these ten interesting facts about Germany and their history with casinos. You are about to see some of the biggest, oldest and most interesting of them all as well as some other amazing facts along the way. So before you sign up for that ‘mit einem 10€‘ why not read these first and get some appreciation of how far casinos and online gambling have come in this Western European country…
Last To the Game
Did you know it wasn’t until July 2021 that the Interstate Treaty on Gambling (GlüSTV) legalised online gambling. Before that people had to use VPNs to bounce their signal around.
Casino Wiesbaden
This casino is one of the oldest in Europe and was built in 1810 by architect Christian Zais. This casino was operating for almost 100 years before all gambling in German was banned in 1872.
Limits
From the 1st of January 2020 German bettors will not be able to bet more than €1,000 a month and there were fines for any bookies or online sites that allowed this. Sure, this law was only temporary and was removed on the 20ths of June 2020, but it is still interesting.
A Big Market
It is said the online gambling market in Germany is a gross amount of over 11.7 billion euros which is one of the highest amounts in the whole of Europe.
Lots of Staff
There might be less than 30 real-world casinos spread all over Germany, but it still has around 3,500 employees making the casino industry one of the biggest employers in the entertainment industry.
The Lottery Is State Owned
There are several lotteries in German from Lotto 6 aus 49, Spiel 77, Super 6, Glückspirale, plus 5 and even Keno, but they are all commission basis for the state lotteries and not even online sites are allowed to host one that isn’t.
Laws
Every single casino in German has to follow some of the highest gambling laws in the world. They need to have a licence for every game they host as well as the exact amount people can expect to win or lose in a single bet and even 1 Euro over this can result in the casino owners going to jail!
Loads of Slots
in a 2019 survey of all real-world casinos based in Germany, there were over 236,500 slot machines spread across very few casinos. In fact, many of them have multiple floors of slot games. In fact, some of the smaller casinos only have slot games and no table games!
The Spielbank Do-Hohensyburg
You might not have heard that name before, but this is the largest casino in the entire country of Germany and it features 34 table games, 10 poker tables, 368 gaming and video poker machines!
Smoking in Casinos
While all casinos in German are non-smoking by law, they do get around this with some very clever solutions like phone-booth smoking stalls (located right next to the gaming tables) and outdoor tables for the summertime.
While doing research for this post I was surprised at how German fell in and out of love with gambling for a while. But it is good to see they offer much more variety and choice these days.