Germany

[DE] “Tag des Glücks” Show Taken off Air following Ban

IRIS 2013-1:1/14

Peter Matzneller

Institute of European Media Law (EMR), Saarbrücken/Brussels

The TV show “Tag des Glücks” (“Day of Luck”) run by the lottery organisation Süddeutsche Klassenlotterie (SKL) was taken off air in October 2012. This was the response of the companies involved to several decisions of the Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht (Licensing and Monitoring Commission - ZAK), which had criticised the show and stopped its broadcasting on several occasions in the past few years.

The ZAK had repeatedly found that the programme had infringed the ban on the public advertising of gambling pursuant to section 5(3) of the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Treaty on Gambling - GlüStV), stating that the advertorial nature of the programme was clear from the numerous times the lottery was mentioned during the presentation and from the extremely frequent on-screen displays of the relevant logos. The ZAK also criticised the fact that each contestant had to possess an SKL lottery ticket.

However, the lottery organisation has not completely given up disseminating the show: the hitherto last edition of the programme was streamed on the SKL website in early November 2012 and has been available there in full length ever since.