The German Gambling Authority (GGL) has published its latest activity report for 2025. The report highlights the GGL’s measures in supervising legal providers and its latest work against illegal gambling.
Supervision and Licensing of Legal Providers Further Systematised
While previous years focused primarily on granting licenses, in 2025 the emphasis shifted significantly to the structured supervision of licensed providers. Key instruments included supervisory discussions, both ad hoc and proactive measures based on reports and market observations. Internal collaboration between the relevant departments was further intensified, contributing to a uniform and consistent supervisory practice.
Further Development of the Technical Infrastructure and Supervisory Systems
The expansion of the technical infrastructure was further advanced. The goal is to create a reliable and comparable data basis for supervision, analysis and future regulatory decisions. Enforcing the mandatory and correct use of the safe servers by the authorised providers remained a challenging process in 2025, but it is the foundation for the necessary improvement in data quality.
Focusing the Fight Against Illegal Gambling on the Entire Market Environment
In 2025, the approach to combating illegal online gambling was further refined and consistently aligned with the entire market environment. In addition to measures against the operators themselves, the focus is increasingly shifting to the service providers involved. This approach ensures that illegal offerings are not viewed in isolation, but rather addressed within their market and process contexts.
In 2025, GGL worked closely with platform operators to further reduce the visibility of illegal content in the digital space.
Market measurement has been further developed scientifically. Due to its opaque and dynamic structure, the evaluation of the development of the illegal gambling market requires a particularly robust methodological basis. The 2025 activity report therefore does not include any independent figures on the size of the illegal market for the year 2025. Instead, the presentation is based on the results of the scientific study “Investigation of the black market and channeling of gambling on the internet based on a survey of gamblers”.
GGL deliberately chose this approach to increase the validity and comparability of the market data and to ensure methodologically sound results.
This study, already published, shows that in 2024 the market volume of illegal and therefore unregulated online gambling will be 23%. This results in a channeling rate of 77%. This means that legal or regulated offerings account for more than three-quarters of the online gambling market.
The existing study will be continued so that a scientifically sound data basis on the development of the illegal market can be provided.
Outlook 2026: 5 Years of GGL Mean Evaluation and Further Development
The developments so far show an increasing consolidation of the supervisory and enforcement structures within the framework of the State Treaty on Gambling 2021.
The focus in the coming years will be on the legally required evaluation, the preparation of the new licensing cycle from 2027 onwards, and the further strengthening of data-based and scientifically sound supervisory instruments.
The 2025 activity report can be found under Publications of the Joint Gambling Authority of the Federal States – Annual Reports.
