Authorities in the German city of Hamburg have issued a cease and desist order against online gaming operator bet-at-home.com and local tournament organisers, in an attempt to block the company’s title sponsorship of the ATP Hamburg Open which is due to commence later this month.
Last week the event’s organisers renamed the tournament the bet-at-home Open, dropping the .com element from all promotional material and removing hyperlinks to the online gaming site after a legal intervention by Schleswig-Holstein's state-licensed casino. The casino operator argued that the sponsorship deal represented a clear breach of the State Treaty on Gaming since bet-at-home.com does not hold a valid German gaming license.
Despite the name change however and removal of links to the gaming site from the tournament website, Hamburg authorities have increased pressure on the organisers to completely drop bet-at-home as a sponsor of the event.
Hamburg’s interior affairs department said that the name change from bet-at-home.com-Open to bet-at-home-Open does not change their earlier decision that such sponsorship would be in breach of the State Treaty on Gaming, and the city’s Sports and Education authority continues to withhold 200,000 EUROS of sponsorship money which it had verbally pledged to support the event.
Detlef Hammer, Managing Director of Hamburg Sports & Entertainment GmbH, the tournament organiser, maintains however that the tournament will still go on. "We will examine the cease and desist notice and respond shortly in close consultation with our partner,” said Hammer.
According to bet-at-home spokesman Claus Retschitzegger, the company has yet to receive a copy of the notice. "We cannot consider our next steps before we know the full details of the text," he said.
The company maintains that it is entitled to sponsor the event as a European online gaming operator licensed in Malta and challenges the validity of the German State Treaty on Gaming in relation to European law.
bet-at-home was expected to contribute 250,000 EUROS to the tournament in sponsorship fees alongside the 200,000 EUROS from the city of Hamburg.
The tournament which boasts a prize pool of 1 million EUROS is the highest-ranked tennis tournament in Germany and one of the top 20 tournaments in the world.
