GERMANY – North-Westfalia gets ready to privatize casinos
State amends legislation to sell equity in Westspiel, owner and operator of 4 casinos
In May last year, the North Rhine-Westphalian State Cabinet approved the proposal from the Ministry of Finance to sell all of the state’s shares in Westdeutsche Spielbanken GmbH (WestSpiel), clearing the way for the state’s casino privatization process. At present, the state owned NRW Bank is the sole shareholder of the WestSpiel, which owns and operates four casinos.
Following the privatization statement, Minister Lutz Lienenkämper, said: “The upheavals in the gaming sector raise the question of whether a development bank has to operate casinos. In our view, neither a development bank nor the state has to sit at the roulette table.”
Last month, the Nordrhein-Westfalen legislators passed a legislative procedure to amend the North Rhine-Westphalian Casino Act to facilitate the privatisation of the four WestSpiel-owned casinos through a tender process conducted to select a new concession holder for the venues. The concession will also grant rights to construct two more casinos in the state.
In year-end figures for 2019, WestSpiel reported €136.8m in gross gaming revenue in 2019, up 27.0% year-on-year, with tax contribution of €65.8m. The company employs 1,020 people at the year’s end, and casinos visitors increased by 3% to register just above one million.
The minister pointed out that six states in Germany already successfully operate privately owned casinos: Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt.
“It doesn’t matter whether a casino is in public or private hands. It is crucial that supervision of the game operations is close and effective, adding that the primary goal of the state government is to strengthen state supervision, for example through intensified presence controls. In future, the casino game in North Rhine-Westphalia will take place with the same quality and with the best possible player protection, only under a different ownership.”
The WestSpiel Group operates three casinos across the country via Westdeutsche Spielbanken GmbH (Aachen, Bad Oeynhausen, Dortmund) and a fourth casino in Duisburg via Casino Duisburg GmbH & Co. KG. The WestSpiel Group also includes Westdeutsche Spielcasino Service GmbH and WestSpiel Entertainment GmbH, through which offers food & beverage services and event organizations.
