Austria Submits 13-License Casino Reform to European Commission, Targets 2027 Market Opening

Austria’s Ministry of Finance has formally submitted its long-awaited gambling reform package to the European Commission, kicking off a mandatory three-month standstill review before the legislation can be enacted. If the timetable holds, the country’s restructured gambling market would open for a new era in October 2027, ending the decades-long casino monopoly held by Casinos Austria and introducing a licensed, competitive framework for the first time.

The proposed law would cap the market at a maximum of 13 casino licenses, which regulators could award in packages rather than individually. That structural detail has already become the central point of contention between incumbent and prospective operators as the process moves through EU review.

A 13-License Framework With Strings Attached

Under the draft legislation, licensing authorities would be required to ensure balanced geographical distribution of casinos and prevent excessive competition between operators, conditions framed around player protection rather than pure market economics. Casinos Austria, which currently holds the gambling monopoly, has publicly pushed for the package-based licensing system to remain intact. Smaller prospective operators, unsurprisingly, argue that individual concessions would create a fairer path into the market.

Industry observers expect Austria to ultimately split the 13 licenses into two large packages, one of six and one of seven, a structure that would likely allow one additional major operator to enter while limiting realistic opportunities for smaller companies to gain a foothold. That expectation alone has shaped much of the early lobbying around the bill.

Online Licensing and a Hard Deadline for Unauthorized Operators

Beyond brick-and-mortar casinos, the reform introduces open licensing for online gambling operators for the first time, a significant shift for a market where unauthorized international operators have long served Austrian players in a legal gray zone. The legislation includes transitional provisions for companies currently operating without authorization, but the window is tight: those operators must stop serving Austrian customers by January 1, 2027, to remain immediately eligible to apply for a license once the new framework takes effect.

Miss that deadline, and the penalty is steep. Operators that continue serving Austria past the cutoff would face an 18-month waiting period before becoming eligible to apply, a penalty that increases to 24 months starting in 2030. Any applicant would also need to settle outstanding tax obligations and unpaid claims tied to roughly 20,000 affected players, a provision clearly aimed at closing the door on liabilities linked to prior enforcement gaps in the unregulated market.

The Austrian Betting and Gaming Association (OVWG) has voiced skepticism that these transitional arrangements will meaningfully push players toward Win2Day or other licensed, land-based operators. Instead, the association warns the black market could end up the biggest beneficiary if the incentives don’t line up as intended.

Enforcement, Player Protection, and What Comes Next

To back the new licensing structure, the bill calls for a digital supervisory platform to oversee the regulated sector, including a central deposit limit that would function independently of any individual gambling company. On the enforcement side, regulators would gain tools including payment blocking, blacklisting, and network blocking to cut off illegal operators and steer activity toward licensed providers.

Player protection measures run throughout the package. A new national exclusion register would cover casino gambling, slot machines, and online platforms alike, combining voluntary self-exclusion with operator-imposed bans so that excluded players can’t simply hop between products or companies to dodge restrictions. Mandatory deposit limits would apply to both online gambling and slot machines, with tighter thresholds for adults between 18 and 26, a nod to research showing younger players face elevated risk of gambling-related harm.

The bill would also reduce maximum slot-machine stakes, mandate slower game speeds, and require a cooling-off break after 90 consecutive minutes of play. Operators would additionally be legally required to assess the addiction potential of their own products, with those findings expected to feed into broader research and public policy work on harm reduction.

For now, the clock is on the European Commission. Austria’s Ministry of Finance submitted the draft legislation on Tuesday, triggering the compulsory three-month standstill period during which the Commission can raise objections tied to state aid rules or the European single market. Austria’s domestic parliamentary process is expected to continue in parallel, meaning the shape of the final law, and the fate of that contested 13-license cap, could still shift before the market opens in 2027. Anyone watching how European regulators structure competitive gambling markets should keep an eye on how this one shakes out, especially given the parallels to licensing debates already playing out across other regulated markets in the United States, where operators continue to jockey for position through online casino promotions as new jurisdictions open up.