The GGL: Germany's Joint Gambling Authority Explained

The Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder (GGL) is a public-law institution headquartered in Halle (Saale) (Hansering 15, 06108 Halle, Germany). It was established on July 1, 2021, alongside the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021 (GlüStV 2021), and has since served as the central regulator for cross-state online gambling in Germany. Before that date, no single, nationally responsible authority existed for this space — oversight of online gambling was split across Germany's 16 federal states, which made enforcing consistent rules considerably harder.

History and Legal Basis

The GGL was jointly commissioned by Germany's 16 federal states to carry out the tasks assigned to it under the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021. According to the authority's own account, taking on these responsibilities happened gradually — the GGL did not exercise the full scope of its current authority from day one, but built out its supervisory function over a period of time. That's an important piece of context for anyone trying to understand an individual operator's licensing history in Germany: an operator that was already active in Germany before 2021 was operating under a different regulatory environment than exists today.

The GGL's legal foundation is the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, signed by all 16 federal states. For more on what that treaty actually contains and what it's trying to achieve, see our separate guide to the GlüStV 2021.

The GGL's Responsibilities in Detail

The GGL describes its central task as regulating the German online gambling market. In practice, that breaks down into several distinct but connected areas of work:

Reviewing and issuing authorizations. The GGL reviews applications from operators that want to offer cross-state online gambling in Germany, and grants authorization once the legal requirements are met. This process is the entire basis for whether an operator can appear in our licensed operators overview at all.
Monitoring ongoing compliance. An authorization, once granted, isn't a permanent guarantee — the GGL monitors whether authorized operators continue meeting player-protection, youth-protection, and fraud-prevention requirements during actual operation.
Combating illegal gambling. The GGL actively acts against operators offering gambling in Germany without the necessary authorization, as well as against advertising for such unauthorized offerings.
Market monitoring and research support. The authority tracks developments in the German gambling market and supports scientific research, including in addiction prevention.

By the GGL's own description, it specifically regulates: virtual slot machine games, online poker, online casino games, and internet-based sports and horse betting. Federal social lotteries, class lotteries, and cross-state commercial game mediation also fall under its remit.

What the GGL Does Not Regulate

Not every form of gambling in Germany falls under GGL oversight. Certain areas, according to the authority itself, remain with the individual federal states and their own regulators — including gaming halls, physical casinos, small and large lotteries, land-based (non-online) sports betting, horse racing betting conducted outside the internet, and gaming machines. For players, that has a concrete practical implication: the German authorization we show on our licensed operators page refers specifically to online, cross-state products within the GGL's remit — not to local, state-regulated gambling offerings.

Governance and Organization

The GGL has its own governing bodies overseeing its work: an Administrative Council (Verwaltungsrat) and an Executive Board (Vorstand). This structure is documented on the authority's own website, including an organizational chart. For most readers of this page, the GGL's precise internal organization matters less than the practical outcome of its decisions — namely, whether a given operator genuinely holds a valid authorization.

What This Means for Players

For players, the GGL matters mainly through two channels: the public whitelist of authorized operators, and the enforcement of player-protection measures. The GGL's whitelist lists operators and intermediaries that actually hold an authorization, filterable by gambling type and responsible authority. Anyone checking whether a specific operator is genuinely licensed shouldn't rely solely on the operator's own claims — check this official source instead, or our own editorially verified licensed operators overview, which is built directly on that same kind of evidence.

The GGL is also responsible for enforcing the player-protection measures set out in the GlüStV 2021 — deposit limits and the central player self-exclusion file among them. More on that in our guides to player protection in Germany and OASIS and the self-exclusion file.

What This Means for Operators

For operators, GGL oversight means a concrete, verifiable authorization process instead of a vague legal grey zone. An operator holding a GGL authorization is required, per the authority's own description, to state on the homepage of its website that it holds a state authorization and to name the authority that granted it. An operator that doesn't make that statement, or doesn't appear on the official whitelist, has either not yet applied, is still under review, or is operating without the required German authorization. For more on the difference between a genuine German authorization and a foreign license (from Malta or Curaçao, for instance), see our guide What a German Gambling License Actually Means.

Why the GGL Exists at All

Before the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, online gambling was, for the most part, prohibited nationwide in Germany — while in practice, numerous operators without German authorization were nonetheless reachable by German players. That gap between the law on the books and the actual market reality was one of the central reasons for the reform: lawmakers no longer wanted to leave the population's existing appetite for gambling entirely to an unregulated black market, and instead wanted to channel it into a limited, monitored, legal supply. The GGL is the institutional result of that reform — a single, cross-state authority that didn't previously exist in this form, because responsibility for gambling oversight traditionally sat with the individual federal states, and in some areas still does (see "What the GGL Does Not Regulate" above).

That also explains why a GGL authorization plays such a central role for readers of this site: it's the only reliable evidence that an operator is actually operating under the law that has applied since 2021, rather than simply pointing to a foreign license that carries no legal weight as a German authorization.

How AskBigBonus Uses GGL Data

On AskBigBonus, we use the GGL — specifically its public whitelist and the legal framework it publishes — as the primary source for our "German authorization verified" classification. An operator only receives that classification from us when we've found concrete, traceable evidence of its German authorization — not because the operator itself claims to be licensed, and not because it happens to be technically reachable from Germany (see our guide What a German Gambling License Actually Means for the exact distinction). We keep that separation deliberately strict, because a wrong or premature classification can have real consequences for players — for instance, assuming an offering is legally secure when it actually isn't.

Frequently Asked Questions About the GGL

Is the GGL the same as an EU-wide gambling authority?
No. The GGL is responsible exclusively for the German market and was established by Germany's 16 federal states. An authorization from another EU country or other jurisdiction does not substitute for a German GGL authorization.

Does the GGL also regulate land-based casinos?
No — physical casinos and gaming halls fall, per the GGL, under the jurisdiction of the individual federal states, not the GGL itself.

Where can I find the official list of authorized operators?
On the GGL's whitelist page. Our own licensed operators overview is built directly from that same source.

What if an operator claims to be "licensed" but doesn't appear on the whitelist?
A claim alone isn't evidence. Check the specific authority named and the license number, and compare it against the official whitelist. A foreign license (from Curaçao, for example) is legally distinct from a German GGL authorization.

Can the GGL revoke an operator's authorization?
Since the GGL, by its own description, monitors ongoing compliance, an authorization once granted isn't a permanently fixed status. The current status for a given operator should always be checked against the current whitelist, not a past snapshot of it.

Does a GGL authorization automatically cover every gambling product an operator offers?
No. An authorization always applies to a specific product — sports betting or online casino games, for instance — not automatically to an operator's entire offering. See our guide on German gambling licensing and our separate page on online casino licensing for more.

Is the GGL responsible for handling player complaints?
The GGL describes part of its role as monitoring whether authorized operators comply with player-protection requirements. For individual questions or complaints, we point readers to the GGL's own official contact channels on its website.

A Note on How Current This Information Is

Regulatory bodies evolve, and areas of responsibility can shift with future amendments to the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag. Every guide on this site carries the date it was last checked against the official source, so you can judge how current the information is. If the GGL's responsibilities or procedures change, we'll update this guide accordingly — but for anything legally binding, always treat the GGL's own official website as the authoritative source, not our summary of it.