Germany’s GGL asks for more flexibility as online gambling rules face a 2021 treaty review

Germany’s Joint Gaming Authority of the federal states (GGL) is marking its fifth year by asking for a more flexible regulatory framework, saying the online gambling market is changing faster than the law can keep up. For licensed operators and the PSPs around them, the message is straightforward: the next review of the 2021 State Treaty on Gambling could decide how quickly Germany can react to new business models and illegal operators.

1. The GGL says it now employs around 100 people and has evolved from a political mandate into a national specialist regulator. Ronald Benter, a board member, described the past five years as building both an institution and a completely new supervisory field at the same time: hiring staff, creating structures, and developing expertise while the market itself kept shifting.
2. The regulator’s request is aimed at the upcoming evaluation of the 2021 State Treaty on Gambling, which governs the sector in Germany. The GGL wants that review to give it more room to act within the law without having to wait for legislative changes every time a new business model appears or a new form of illegal operation emerges.
3. On the licensed side, the GGL says 129 operators and intermediaries currently hold valid licences, covering 229 authorised gambling websites in Germany. That is the practical map of the regulated market today: a defined pool of licensed entities, but one that still sits inside a fast-moving digital environment.
4. In 2025 alone, the authority carried out more than 600 supervisory checks on licensed providers, focusing on player protection, advertising practices, and the structure of gambling products. Since it began operating, the GGL has also revoked two licences from operators that failed to meet regulatory conditions.
5. The sharpest signal in the report is the rise in enforcement against illegal gambling. Prohibition procedures increased from 68 in 2022 to 287 in 2025, more than quadrupling in three years. For PSPs and acquiring teams, that is the number worth watching: Germany is telling the market that enforcement is getting more active, not less.

For high-risk payment providers, the real takeaway is not the speechifying around institutional maturity. It is that Germany’s regulated market is now documented, licensed, and actively monitored, while the illegal side is facing a much heavier enforcement tempo. If the treaty review gives the GGL more operational flexibility, the compliance bar for gambling-related payment flows in Germany could move faster than the statute book usually does.