Editorial · About

About Casinohafen

Casinohafen is a test desk for the German gambling market, published in German and in English for people living in Germany. At the moment it earns nothing: no advertising, no affiliate links, no paid placements. This page says who stands behind it, what it publishes and refuses to publish, and why the usual funding model of a gambling comparison site is not simply unattractive here but prohibited by § 5(6) of the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag.

By the Casinohafen deskUpdated: 22 October 2026Checked: September 2026

In brief

A German test desk with an English section written for residents, not a translated site and not a market-entry guide for visitors.
Current monetisation: none. No advertising, no affiliate links, no paid entries, no sponsored reviews.
§ 5(6) Glücksspielstaatsvertrag prohibits remuneration for internet advertising that depends on turnover, deposits or stakes and names affiliate links expressly — the revenue share that funds this business elsewhere is unlawful in Germany.
Only operators listed on the whitelist of the Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder (GGL) are covered. An unlicensed offer is not reviewed, not linked and not described as an alternative.
Grades come from a published catalogue of 42 criteria in six weighted groups, applied before any commercial question arises.

Advertising revenue: 0 € no monetisation at present
Affiliate links: none prohibited if turnover-dependent, § 5(6) GlüStV
Admission requirement: GGL whitelist checked at the editorial deadline
Languages: 2 German and English (en-de)

What this site is for

Germany runs one of the most tightly written gambling regimes in Europe and publishes almost all of it in German. The treaty text, the decisions of the GGL, the OASIS forms of the Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt, the deposit-limit evidence rules: German, all of it. Someone who lives here, pays tax here and gambles here but reads English is expected to navigate that on machine translation and forum hearsay.

That is the gap this site's English section is written into. It is not a translation of the German pages and not a guide for tourists. It assumes a reader with a German bank account, a German address and a German identity document, who will meet the terms OASIS, GGL, LUGAS, Einzahlungslimit and Spielbank on real forms and needs them explained once and then kept.

It also assumes a reader who wants to be told when a process is closed to them in practice. A fully digital OASIS application needs a BundID and the online ID function of a German identity card; the counselling helpline answers in German. We write those sentences rather than leave them to be discovered at the end of an afternoon.

How the site is funded, and what German law does to that question

The honest answer today is that it is not funded. There are no advertisements on these pages, no affiliate links, no paid entries and no sponsored reviews, and nothing about an operator's position can be bought. If that changes, it will be written here in plain words before it appears anywhere else on the site.

The more interesting part is why the change could not take the usual shape. Almost every gambling comparison site in the world is paid a share of what the operator earns from the readers it sends — revenue share, a percentage of net losses. In Germany that model is closed. § 5(6) sentence 1 of the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag prohibits remuneration for internet advertising that is dependent on turnover, deposits or stakes, and names affiliate links expressly as the case in point.

The consequence is worth stating bluntly, because it is checkable rather than a promise about our character. A German-facing site cannot lawfully be paid more when a reader loses more. What remains permissible is a fixed fee, independent of any individual's play. Fixed money still has to be declared and still has to be kept away from the grade, but it cannot create the incentive that makes the model suspect in the first place.

So the disclosure on this page is not a ritual. It is a statement about a business model that the law has already narrowed, and any reader can verify the narrowing by reading one subsection.

What § 5(6) GlüStV actually says

Remuneration for advertising on the internet that depends on turnover, deposits or stakes is prohibited — the statute adds "in particular in the form of affiliate links". § 5 also bans advertising for unlicensed gambling entirely, bans personalised advertising to excluded players, and closes broadcast and internet advertising for virtual slot machines, online poker and online casino games between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.

What gets covered and what does not

Admission has one hard condition: the operator must appear on the GGL whitelist at the editorial deadline. The whitelist exists under § 9(8) GlüStV and is the only source that settles the question. As at 31 December 2025 it carried 135 permission holders across 232 websites — 28 for sports betting, 37 for virtual slot machines, 5 for online poker and 5 for online horse race betting. How to read an entry is set out on our page about the German gambling licence.

Operators without a German permission are not reviewed, not linked and not presented as an option, including in the pages about playing outside the licensed system. Those pages exist because the searches exist, and they answer the question by explaining what the reader would be giving up: no OASIS check, no limit file, no German authority competent for a complaint. That is information, not a route.

We also cover things no one pays for: the Spielbanken of the individual federal states, which run under state legislation rather than under a GGL permission and sell nothing we could be paid for; the tax rules; the treaty itself; the exclusion system. Those pages take the most work and would not exist in a portfolio built around commissions, which is itself a reasonable test of what a site is for.

Four things this site does not do

No legal or tax advice. We describe the rules and name the sources. Where an answer turns on a reader's own facts — a disputed account closure, a loss-recovery claim, a tax question about professional play — the answer is a lawyer or a Steuerberater, and we say so instead of writing reassurance.
No invented measurement. Payout percentages we did not measure, waiting times we did not time and sample sizes we did not have do not appear. Where something cannot be assessed from outside — the early-detection algorithm required by § 6i(1) GlüStV is the standard example — the page says it cannot.
No urgency. No countdowns, no "only today", no push towards a deposit. The page about the 1,000 euro deposit limit explains how a higher limit is granted, and also that advertising raised limits is prohibited; we are not going to breach that in spirit while quoting it.
No quiet edits. A substantive correction is dated on the page, and the same error is swept out of every page carrying it in both languages. The people and the process behind that are described under the editorial desk.

Where a reader should be sent instead of to us

Some questions are better answered by someone else, and a site that pretends otherwise is doing its reader a disservice. Anything to do with an OASIS entry — applying, lifting, a third-party application by a relative — is decided by the Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt, and the authority's own pages are the authoritative version; ours explain what will happen and in what order, as on our OASIS overview and the page on lifting an exclusion.

Anything to do with a permission is settled by the GGL whitelist rather than by our table. If our page and the whitelist disagree, the whitelist is right and we want to hear about it.

And if gambling has stopped being a pastime, the right address is not an editorial desk. The Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Gesundheit (BIÖG) runs a free and anonymous counselling helpline on 0800 1 37 27 00, Monday to Thursday 10:00–22:00 and Friday to Sunday 10:00–18:00, with self-tests and information at check-dein-spiel.de. Our page on responsible gambling collects the tools that work faster than any comparison table.

Frequently asked

If the site earns nothing, why does it exist?

It is built as a working editorial product for the German market, which means writing the pages properly before any commercial question is settled. Whether and how it is funded later is an open decision; the constraint that shapes it is already fixed by § 5(6) GlüStV.

Would you take money from a licensed operator?

Only in a form that is lawful here and separable from the grade: a fixed fee, never a share of turnover, deposits or losses. It would be disclosed on this page, and the catalogue and weights would stay exactly where they are published.

Why do you not list operators without a German licence, if they accept German players?

Because listing them would mean recommending an offer with no OASIS check, no cross-operator deposit limit and no German authority competent when something goes wrong. Advertising unlicensed gambling is also prohibited under § 5(7) GlüStV, so the question does not really arise.

Are the English pages the same as the German ones?

No. They cover the same subject matter for a different reader and are written independently — different openings, different order, different examples, and explicit notes where a procedure exists only in German.

How current is the information?

Every page carries a review date; these pages were reviewed in September 2026. Legal statements are re-checked on a fixed rhythm and immediately when something moves — the second amending treaty in force since 1 July 2026 and the GGL's decision guideline on maximum stakes each triggered such a pass.

Sources

Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, § 5 (advertising; para. 6 on turnover-dependent remuneration and affiliate links; para. 7 on unlicensed gambling) — <a href="https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/StVGlueStV2021-5">gesetze-bayern.de</a>
Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, § 9(8) (whitelist of permitted operators) — <a href="https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/StVGlueStV2021-9">gesetze-bayern.de</a>
GGL, whitelist and activity report 2025 — <a href="https://www.gluecksspiel-behoerde.de/de/fuer-spielende/uebersicht-erlaubter-anbieter-whitelist">gluecksspiel-behoerde.de</a>
Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Gesundheit (BIÖG), counselling helpline 0800 1 37 27 00 — <a href="https://www.check-dein-spiel.de/">check-dein-spiel.de</a>