DGAP-Adhoc

bet-at-home.com AG: Company decides to temporarily discontinue offering online casino in Austria and to recognize further provisions due to player lawsuits for repayment of gaming losses

DGAP-Ad-hoc: bet-at-home.com AG / Key word(s): Profit Warning bet-at-home.com AG: Company decides to temporarily discontinue offering online casino in Austria and to recognize further provisions due to player lawsuits for repayment of gaming losses 18-Oct-2021 / 22:37 CET/CEST Disclosure of an inside information acc. to Article 17 MAR of the Regulation (EU) No 596/2014, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. bet-at-home.com AG: Company decides to temporarily discontinue offering online casino in Austria and to recognize further provisions due to player lawsuits for repayment of gaming losses

Düsseldorf, 18 October 2021. bet-at-home.com AG (hereinafter also referred to as the "Company") had already announced on an ongoing basis that a Maltese Group company in Austria was facing legal claims from customers for reimbursement of gambling losses in the online casino. The bet-at-home.com AG Group still considers the online casino (de facto) monopoly of the national Austrian gambling regulation to be contrary to European law and accordingly considers itself to be a lawful online casino provider in Austria. Not least due to the necessity derived from the current European Court of Justice case law of a recurring review also by the Austrian courts, which in the opinion of the bet-at-home.com AG Group is currently not taking place to the required extent, the bet-at-home.com AG Group has so far assumed a positive development of case law, in particular at the higher courts in the appeal instances, until the end of the first half of 2022.

However, due to a recent decision by the Austrian Supreme Court, it is now unclear whether the bet-at-home.com AG Group will be able to enforce its legal opinion in Austrian courts in the foreseeable future.

The Management Board therefore decided today in a joint meeting with the Supervisory Board and with its approval to temporarily discontinue the online casino offering in Austria in a timely manner. This is because, although the bet-at-home.com AG Group also assumes that its actions are lawful under European law and that the lawsuits are also inadmissible under civil law, the continuation of the online casino offering in Austria before final legal clarification over a period of time that is currently no longer foreseeable would lead to a steadily increasing risk potential that appears indefensible overall. The decision on any resumption of the online casino offering in Austria will be made in the future depending on the development of the legal framework. The Maltese Group company will continue to use all available legal means to take action against the lawsuits filed in Austria.