OLG Hamm upholds online gambling losses refund in Germany as Betfair appeal fails

An appellate court in Hamm has rejected Betfair Casino Ltd's attempt to overturn a ruling that ordered it to repay a player's online gambling losses, leaving a €40,855 refund order in place.

The Oberlandesgericht Hamm dismissed the appeal by order dated 29 September 2026, finding it had no prospect of success, according to a case report from the law firm CLLB Rechtsanwälte published by ISA-GUIDE. The judgment it upheld was issued by the Landgericht Bochum on 6 January 2026.

A Maltese licence, no German permit

The player used a German-language website operated by Betfair Casino Ltd between May and October 2015 and lost €40,855, CLLB said. The company held a Maltese licence but no German permission for the offering.

"Because online gambling was in principle prohibited in Germany until 30 June 2021, we demanded that the operator repay our client's losses," said CLLB lawyer Thomas Sittner.

Why the court treated the ban as a protective law

OLG Hamm followed the Bochum court's reading: the operator breached the ban on online gambling in the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag, the state treaty that governed the market, so the contracts were void. The court cited § 4(4) of the treaty in its 2012 version.

That provision is a protective law within the meaning of § 823(2) of the German Civil Code, the court held. It serves the public interest and the individual player, the judges wrote, pointing to other goals set out in the treaty such as addiction prevention and player protection. The court said the protection covers the economic consequences of gambling as well as the risk of addiction.

The claim was not time-barred. Because the ban is a protective law, § 852 of the Civil Code applies, and under that provision a claim can be pursued for ten years.

OLG Hamm also rejected the operator's other arguments: that the German ban conflicted with European law, that the treaty rules were not protective laws, and that pursuing the refund amounted to an abuse of rights.

Where the player gambled and what the operator knew

The claimant showed he had taken part from his home in North Rhine-Westphalia. He also logged in during a holiday in Spain but did not play there out of consideration for his family, an account the court found credible, since a break of several weeks in that period was documented.

Betfair could not argue that the player should have known about the ban from media coverage. The court said the legal position was not obvious to a consumer, and the player said he had assumed the offering was legal. For the operator, by contrast, it should have been clear that online gambling was prohibited in Germany.

The company also failed with an argument that it had been impoverished (Entreicherung). Although it retains only a fee on online poker games, the court said it was not proven that Betfair gained no adequate benefit from the money it received, which would have defeated the defence.

What happens next for refund claims

Sittner said the outcome confirms the legal position for other cases. "The ruling shows that online gambling including sports betting and online poker without the required licence in Germany was and is prohibited," he said. "Players continue to have good chances of recovering their losses from prohibited online gambling."

The account of the case comes from the claimant's law firm, and OLG Hamm disposed of the appeal by order on the ground that it offered no prospect of success.

One point remains open. In a lead case heard on 17 September 2026 (file number I ZR 216/25), the Bundesgerichtshof indicated it tends toward applying § 852 of the Civil Code, but judgment has not yet been pronounced, Sittner said. Until the Federal Court rules, the ten-year limitation question that OLG Hamm answered here lacks a final decision at the top level.