Austria's online gambling monopoly to end after two decades
Lawyers and industry figures at SBC Summit 2026 welcomed Austria's move to a multi-licence market but questioned whether the 2027 timetable and application numbers will hold.
Austria is preparing to dismantle an online gambling monopoly that has stood for around two decades, under a draft law discussed at the SBC Summit 2026 in Lisbon.
Felix Hohenthanner, a lawyer at Rapani Rechtsanwälte, told iGaming Business the change amounted to "a huge shift for every stakeholder in Austria", given how entrenched the single-operator system has become.
He spoke alongside Simon Priglinger-Simader, president of trade association OVWG, after the two appeared on a panel titled "DACH in the Driver's Seat: Austria's Landmark Shift to a Multi-Licence Market".
Both said that a shift of this scale would have seemed unlikely two or three years ago. They pointed to a channelisation rate of roughly 30% and pressure on the Austrian state to raise tax revenue amid an EU deficit procedure as the main forces behind the reform, according to iGaming Business.
Under the draft legislation, licence applications open on 1 January 2027, with licences becoming valid from 1 October that year, when the sole online licence held by incumbent operator Win2Day expires.
Hohenthanner described the schedule as "a very ambitious schedule", noting that several procedural steps have already been compressed. The public consultation ran for just two weeks and attracted more than 100 submissions, yet the draft was sent to Brussels largely unchanged.
A planned submission from Malta could still delay the law coming into force. Hohenthanner said he doubted a licensing process would be running by the first quarter of 2027, while adding, "I really hope so, as a regulatory lawyer," when asked if the timeline would hold.
How many operators will apply
Priglinger-Simader said Austria's finance ministry is expecting around 20 licence applications, a figure OVWG has heard directly in talks held over the past two years. His association has warned officials that the number could fall below 10 if key concerns are not resolved.
The most significant of those concerns, he said, is the non-deductibility of player claims refunds from the tax basis, which he described as the likeliest deal-breaker for prospective applicants.
Operators that were previously active in the Austrian market will also need to settle outstanding player claims and back taxes before applying. Any operator still offering services after 1 January 2027 would face an 18-month waiting period before it could seek a licence.
On stage, Arthur Stadler, founding partner of Stadler Partners, forecast no more than five to ten applicants, a narrower range than the finance ministry's working assumption.
Enforcement capacity remains another open question. The regulator responsible for payment and IP blocking has not yet been established, and Hohenthanner said he could not put a date on when blocking measures would begin, joking he would need to be "a magician" to do so.
Priglinger-Simader told the panel that 15 operators entering the market would represent "a success for the regulation". If applications fail to materialise in early 2027, he said, the government may need to revisit elements of the framework.
Hohenthanner summed up the underlying challenge more plainly, telling the panel that a regulated market only draws players away from unlicensed operators "if the legal product is attractive".