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• Rechtsanwälte
  • Dr. Martin Jaschinski
  • Sebastian Biere
  • Oliver Brexl
  • Thorsten Feldmann LL.M.
  • Dr. Till Jaeger
  • Thomas Nuthmann
  • Julian Höppner LL.M
  • Dr. Markus Wiedemann
  • Dennis Gehnen LL.M.
  • Julia Gebert LL.B.
  • Carsten Kiefer
  • Robert Weist

Contests & Competitions; Gambles & Games of Chance; Games of Skill

Contests and competitions are interesting not only for the entrants, but for the businesses staging them as well. For instance, an exciting contest can help attract lots of customers to an offer on the Internet that is otherwise rather dull. Competitions make it easier for businesses to form profitable alliances, aimed at specifically channelling customers in each other’s direction. There’s money to be earned in staging contests, too. And last but not least, potential customers can be asked on entering a competition to provide an address and consent to being contacted by email, phone, fax or text message.

Holding contests involves not only lots of opportunities but lots of (legal) risks as well. The various requirements laid down by law are all scattered amongst numerous statutes. For instance, anyone organising a contest needs to be familiar with competition law, the Teleservices Act, the Interstate Broadcasting Agreement and its competition statutes, the rules on games contained in the Industrial Code, the Criminal Code and the Interstate Gambling Treaty, not to mention data protection legislation. The basic statutory requirements are constantly changing, on top of which jurisdiction in this particular area is extremely dynamic, inconsistent and sometimes even contradictory. Without knowing what the latest statutory regulations are, holding a contest can easily turn into an incalculable risk. Breaches of the law can end up in court or be penalised with big fines, on top of which there is a risk of costly disputes with competitors, consumer protection organisations and fair trading associations. So in a contest, the actual organisers and not just the entrants definitely need to be aware of all the risks involved.

A gamble – and this distinguishes it from a contest or a game of skill – is when a player has to pay a substantial stake in order to take part, and the outcome of the game is pretty much purely a matter of coincidence. In Germany, the State still has a monopoly on gambling, but there’s no ruling out that the State monopoly will topple in the foreseeable future. Businesses taking strategic steps right now to equip themselves for tomorrow’s market will then be at a clear advantage. One question frequently arising in practice is whether a particular game counts as a gamble in a legal sense and is therefore subject to the State monopoly, or whether by changing a few rules it could be legalised as a game of chance. In this area too, it is extremely risky to do anything without seeking legal advice first of all.

Games of skill differ from games of chance in that the outcome largely depends on the player’s capability and proficiency. With the legislator having reinforced and even extended the State’s monopoly in the Interstate Gambling Treaty, the importance of games of skill has increased markedly over the past few years. All the same, games of skill still harbour numerous legal issues on which the courts have not yet pronounced sufficiently clear rulings and that are sometimes underestimated, but market players are becoming increasingly aware of these issues and are devoting closer attention to them.

We give you advice on how to select, organise and advertise contests and games that might be beneficial to your business. We point out the legal risks and help you to avoid them or at least keep them to a minimum. We show you ways of taking the right strategic decisions early on, enabling you to make a prompt and adequate response once decisive market developments start to emerge. And we assist you with legal and bureaucratic procedure in connection with organising and advertising games and contests.