Why there is a reform at all
The starting point is undisputed. According to the Addiction Epidemiology Report 2025 published by Gesundheit Österreich GmbH, around four percent of the Austrian population show problematic or at least mildly pathological gambling behaviour, which amounts to roughly 300,000 people. A quarter of them are severely affected.
The previous system was strict, but it never reached these people. Anyone who wanted to play found an offer online at any time, simply one without an Austrian concession, operated from Malta, Curaçao, Belize or Costa Rica. These operators comply with no Austrian player protection requirement and are practically beyond the reach of the authorities. A prohibition that does not reach the market protects no one.
What the draft gets right
The draft takes several sensible steps. It establishes an independent authority for gambling and player protection, tasked with monitoring the market and supporting it scientifically, funded by a contribution from market participants. It obliges operators to connect electronically to the Federal Computing Centre and to deposit their source code, giving the supervisory authority genuine technical access and audit rights for the first time. And it provides for binding loss limits, graded by age, which are to apply to online offerings as well.
The most important step, however, is a different one. As late as the January 2026 draft, the monopoly on online gambling was to be retained. Shortly before the article went to press, the turnaround came: the current version provides for an unlimited number of online concessions. This is the point at which the reform can serve its purpose. The black market does not disappear because it is prohibited, but because a legal offering exists that supervision can actually reach. Licensed operators are tied to the control of the new supervisory authority, to loss and self-limitation systems and to the monitoring of data traffic. Whoever plays there is visible and can therefore be protected. There is also the fiscal side: according to a study by Branchenradar cited in the article, an open licensing system could achieve a channelling rate of up to 85.5 percent and tax revenue of up to 1.88 billion euros, close to a doubling of what is collected today.
First point of criticism: the cooling-off period
In one place the draft works against its own objective. Operators that have so far offered their services without a concession are to shut down on 1 January 2027 and can only obtain a licence from 1 October 2027. That leaves nine months between shutdown and licence.
Demand does not disappear during those nine months. It moves to wherever games are still on offer, meaning the part of the black market that pays no attention to the reform in the first place. The very channelling effect that the whole model depends on is thus interrupted precisely during the transition. A seamless transfer into the licensing system would make sense, not a gap.
Second point of criticism: sports betting stays with the provinces
In Austria, sports betting is traditionally classified not as gambling but as a game of skill. By European standards this is a special path; in practically every other EU member state sports betting counts as gambling. The consequence of this classification is a question of competence: because the federal legislator never made use of its power, the nine provinces each regulate betting themselves.
For the internet this no longer works. The provincial betting acts essentially apply where there is a betting shop, a betting terminal or a server in the province concerned (see for instance OGH 27 January 2023, 1 Ob 176/22x). An online bookmaker without a physical connecting factor in Austria therefore operates in a grey area or escapes supervision entirely. The article consequently calls for nationwide regulation of online sports betting with its own open licensing system, kept cleanly separate from the one for online casino games.
Third point of criticism: the bets nobody regulates
That leaves a gap the draft does not address at all. On international prediction markets such as Polymarket or Kalshi, people have long been betting on election outcomes, economic data and pop culture events. These platforms sit between financial market product and classic wager and thus fall through every grid of existing supervision. Their addictive potential is considerable, not least because much of this runs on cryptocurrencies on decentralised platforms. A licensing system that claims to cover the market must define clear guardrails and tax connecting factors for such bets too.
What this means for affected players
The reform changes nothing about your claim. It operates for the future. For losses you suffered with an operator without an Austrian concession, the law as it stood at the time of play continues to apply: the gaming contract is void, the stakes were paid without legal basis and can be reclaimed, reduced by any winnings paid out. A future licensing system does not legalise the past.
One point of the reform is nevertheless of immediate interest to those affected: any operator that has so far offered its services illegally and wants a concession in future must first satisfy the final judgments from player claims and pay the outstanding levies in arrears. What that means in practice is covered in detail in our article Anyone who wants an online licence must first pay out the players.
On the state of the process: the review period has expired, but the reform has not been adopted. Changes remain possible until it is passed in parliament.
The full article in ecolex (MANZ)
The detailed analysis, with all references, the constitutional classification of the sports betting competence and the complete reform proposals, has been published by MANZ:
Peschel, Die geplante Glücksspielreform: ein notwendiger Impuls mit ordnungspolitischem Reformstau. Plädoyer für ein offenes Lizenzsystem und die bundesweite Regulierung von Online-Sportwetten, ecolex 2026/262, 489 (issue 7, August 2026).
You can obtain the full article through the MANZ legal database: rdb.manz.at/document/rdb.tso.LIecolex20260705
What you can do now
Whether you can reclaim your gambling losses does not depend on the reform, but on whether the operator held an Austrian concession at the time you played. We examine that free of charge and without obligation. For an initial assessment, the operator concerned and the approximate total loss are enough. Send us a non-binding enquiry.