Germany’s gambling blocking system hit 1,843 sites in 2025, but operators kept reappearing

Germany says it made 1,843 illegal gambling websites inaccessible in 2025, and the GGL checked 2,662 sites overall. The catch is that the same operators can reappear through new domains, payment routes, and search listings, which is exactly the sort of thing PSPs and acquirers need to track when assessing exposure to Germany.

1. According to the GGL, 1,843 websites became inaccessible in 2025 through prohibition measures or network blocking, and 178 could no longer use common payment services. Those are real enforcement actions, but they do not automatically eliminate the underlying operation.
2. The system works as a chain of separate measures rather than a single kill switch: prohibition orders against operators, technical action against hosts or intermediaries, payment restrictions against financial companies, and cooperation with search or advertising platforms. In practice, one blocked route often just pushes traffic to another.
3. The GGL’s own reporting shows why the headline numbers can overstate the result. If a technical intermediary changes, the authority says the process has to start again against the new provider. That means a blocked domain, payment relationship, or service provider can be replaced while the commercial operation keeps going.
4. The obvious short-cut took a hit in March 2025, when the Federal Administrative Court confirmed that ordinary internet access providers could not be used as broad blocking instruments under the current wording of the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag. The court’s point was narrow but important: a company that merely transmits third-party data is not automatically responsible for the gambling content it carries.
5. The practical takeaway for payment firms is simple enough. Germany can interrupt distribution, payments, and visibility, but the underlying merchant can still survive by changing infrastructure faster than the enforcement cycle. For PSPs, the risk is not just onboarding one domain; it is whether the operator behind it has already built the next one.

The thing is, the enforcement table looks cleaner than the market reality. Germany’s blocking system can make a site disappear, but it has not yet made repeat operators stop coming back.