Terms and Conditions clause reduces the jackpot
According to Ehrentraut, his client was the only player to hit the jackpot and expected to win 1.2 million euros. However She only received a winnings of 600,000 euros, as the lawyer reports on LinkedIn.
The reason for this is the so-called +1 rule in the Lottohelden terms and conditions. Ehrentraut claims that the clause allows the provider to add another winner to a specific prize category in order to reduce the payout rate to 50 percent.
According to Ehrentraut, the profit is not distributed according to the state quotas, but is artificially reduced. In Ehrentraut's opinion, this was “highly surprising” for the players and not legally effective under German law (§ 307 BGB).
Lottohelden managing director contradicts the representation
Magnus von Zitzewitz, managing director of Lottohelden, wrote a response on LinkedIn a few hours after Ehrentraut's post. He accused Ehrentraut of “ignorance of the facts” and pointed out that the winnings from secondary lotteries would be based on the results of the primary lottery.
There was a jackpot winner in the primary lottery in the drawing on December 15, 2024, so that the player would only have won half of the jackpot if she had participated in the primary lottery. Since participating in a secondary lottery represents a bet on the odds of the primary lottery, this reasoning seems understandable.
Participation in secondary lotteries remains unpunished
According to the current legal situation, participation in secondary lotteries represents a form of illegal gambling in USA. The consumer advice center warns against participating in such games of chance.
Most providers are currently advocating that they be allowed to operate legally on the market in USA even without a German license due to the freedom to provide services under EU law. In this context, there are still a few judgments pending before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which should finally clarify this issue.
Due to the opaque legal situation, players are typically protected in court rulings. For example, a 39-year-old woman won 106,000 euros in a second lottery last year and assumed that she had played the lottery legally. Therefore, a case against you was dropped, accusing you of participating in illegal gamblingigt. In other cases, players were allowed to keep their winnings and not have to pay a penalty.
Lottohelden is planning a legal market launch as a lottery agent
In another comment, von Zitzewitz explained that Lottohelden is currently preparing to launch the market as a lottery broker and that he is the managing director of this division, which operates independently of the rest of the group that offers secondary lotteries.
Lottohelden is managed as a brand under the umbrella of Lottoland USA GmbH, which has a license for commercial gaming brokerage from the Joint Gaming Authority of the States (GGL). However, this appears to be a completely different business model, as no secondary lotteries are organized, but players are referred directly to the primary lotteries.
It will be interesting to see how the possible legal dispute between Jobst Ehrentraut's client and Lottohelden develops. It currently does not seem clear whether the application of the +1 rule is legal. Magnus von Zitzewitz does not seem to respond directly to Ehrentraut's assumption that a winner would be randomly added to the jackpot prize category.
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