There was much conjecture over the potential scale of consequence around last week’s ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against Malta and Lottoland.
Ramifications are beginning to come to light, as even in global jurisdictions, the ruling enables legal knives to be sharpened. A slew of operators are facing coordinated legal action in New Zealand.
Claims have been filed against bet365, SkyCity Entertainment and Super Group, as legal challenges on retrospective gambling activities are set to head to the High Court in Auckland.
Mirroring the cases that have flooded Malta’s judiciary, operators that offered offshore/unlicensed online gambling services are set to face scrutiny if they are deemed to have actively targeted New Zealand-based consumers before regulatory reform.
That being said, given that New Zealand, whilst the ruling of the CJEU may have emboldened external courts to take legal action, there is no real precedent set as to whether a specific judicial framework, such as New Zealand, can determine enforcement or penalties on online gambling activities before a legislative settlement.
Last week, operator trepidation was elevated after a ruling from the CJEU stated that contracts between players residing in Germany and operators that aren’t licensed in the country are essentially void.
In what was a setback for the Maltese framework, it stated that players could be entitled to claim back losses from operators without the correct license in the country. However, it also potentially sets a precedent for operators and players across Europe.
The cases in New Zealand will skip the bureaucracy of Europe and its member states, as the fate of the operators is decided in proceedings at the Supreme Court.
Bet365 is set to argue its point that the cases should be heard in the location where its license was held and not where the player was based. Given this was the legal framework they were operating under.
The attention of many jurisdictions will be fixed on the development of cases in New Zealand, as they provide something of a non-EU test bed for player reclaim cases outside of the EU jurisdiction.
The floodgates could truly open to player reclaim cases should claimants come out on top in the legal battle against operators in New Zealand.
The fallout could be significant in how New Zealand chooses to settle the remaining stages of its online casino regime, with licence applications due to begin as of July 2026.
As agreed by Parliament, New Zealand’s forthcoming online casino regime will be limited to 15 licences, while TAB NZ’s long-term partnership with Entain establishes a monopoly on online sports betting. Legal scrutiny on past gambling activities may ultimately shape which operators are permitted to join New Zealand’s online casino regime.
That being said, there is still potential for a wider European escalation of cases of this nature, particularly in Finland, where the market has previously been under a monopoly.
Commenting on LinkedIn, iGaming lawyer Antti Koivula warned that “In the Finnish context, it means that if, for example, an MGA-licensed operator has offered gambling services in Finland in violation of the Lotteries Act, customers who have lost money to them may seek to recover their losses in Finnish courts.”
He predicted the demise of Bill 55, likely at the hands of the CJEU, which would further accelerate a legal maelstrom as a result.
He continued: “That said, according to a well-established interpretation of Finnish law, an online gambling service is deemed to be implemented in Finland if the operator has also illegally targeted Finland with gambling marketing and actively enabled participation in Finland. And that is very much prohibited.
Describing Finland as ‘a bureaucracy-heavy country’, he underpinned that it likely requires ‘nothing short of the National Police Board’s prohibition order to establish that an operator has indeed illegally targeted marketing to Finland and actively enabled participation’.
That narrows the scope of Lottoland’s applicability considerably, since obtaining such an order has required some considerable effort and negligence and only three foreign operators have gone all the way.”
It’s hard to know what the future holds for the player reclaiming cases, but whilst the door was opened by the CJEU ruling against Lottoland, the upcoming cases in New Zealand are perhaps of heightened importance to legal narratives across global markets, in a story that could set the tone for discussions in the coming years.
