Online Poker in Germany

Online gambling is on the rise in Germany, even though it's not exactly legal.  One person, Boris Becker a retired tennis star and millionaire is now becoming the spokesman for a new hi profile ad campaign for a poker web site. 

Becker isn't the only celebrity that is lending his star power to the online poker industry to help polish their image and increase their social acceptability.  The Bayer Leverkusen Soccer Club has also done some ads for another online poker companyy.

According to the 2008 Addiction Yearbook there are between 200,000 and 290,000 Germans that are regularly playing poker on the internet.  Also noted is that in 2006 they were estimated at having spent around 1 million euros while gambling online.

But online poker isn't exactly legal since currently their law says that it is only legal to gamble for money in casinos, which leaves the internet market in the grey area.  So if it involves money, online gambling is against the law.  The good news is that so far no one has been charged with the crime.  So game providers servers are located far away in Gibraltar, Malta and the Seychelles making the question of jurisdiction difficult for prosecutes to answer. 

Germany's tax authorities have a monopoly on the gambling business and they are pocketing half of the industry's earnings as a corporate tax.  While online gambling remains unregulated and profits circumvent state coffers.