Two online casino providers licensed by the German state of Schleswig-Holstein have been ordered to stop advertising their services in the state of Saarland. 

On Wednesday, the Saarland’s media regulator Landesmedienanstalt (LMS) announced that it had instructed “two market-strong providers of online casino games with a license from the state of Schleswig-Holstein” to stop promoting their products on Saarland television channels. The announcement didn’t identify the offenders by name. 

Way back in 2012, Schleswig-Holstein issued online casino, poker and sports betting licenses to a number of domestic and foreign gambling operators. At the time, Germany’s 15 other states supported a federal plan that permitted only online sports betting, leading to legal jostling over whether gamblers in these other states could access Schleswig-Holstein’s online casinos.   

Schleswig-Holstein renewed its online casino licenses a year ago, and the LMS noted that the state had initially “guaranteed the limitation of advertising” for its online casinos. “In practice, from the LMS point of view, this limitation is no longer noticeable.”