The email reads pleasantly. After a short greeting comes a sentence that sums up the essentials, then a figure in euros and an account number for the payout. A few days later the money is there, the buyer takes over the claim against the casino, and the matter seems settled. What looks like a clean line under the affair is, for a considerable share of those affected, precisely the opposite. Whoever receives a few thousand euros this way may in many cases have left a multiple of that amount on the other side of the table, without knowing it.
Anyone who has sold once and, weeks or months later, gets an uneasy feeling about whether the offer back then was really fair is not alone with that question. At R. M. Prozessfinanzierung GmbH we receive enquiries from both directions. Sometimes from people who are still weighing whether to sell. More often from people who sold long ago and can no longer place the offer they accepted at the time. This article describes how the sale of claims for casino losses works in Austria, why the lump-sum offers can turn out as low as they do, and when a second review pays off, even when the sale was some time ago. It also covers two situations that are often overlooked in the process: why a rushed sale is rarely the best decision in the current market situation, and why even a settlement that those affected reached with the casino themselves can be reviewed once more.
There is one more point that many only realise when they start to calculate. Very few of those affected know from memory how much they actually lost at an online casino. The true figure is almost always well above the amount someone would name off the top of their head without a written record. A lump-sum offer based on that off-the-cuff figure is in truth comparing against the wrong number. And that is exactly the gap the problematic buyers factor in.
What selling a claim actually means in this sector
Behind the term lies a clearly defined economic operation. A player has lost money at an online casino that holds no Austrian licence. Under settled Austrian case law, this situation gives rise to a reclaim against the casino operator. That claim is an asset. It can be litigated, it can be settled, and it can be sold.
When selling, the player assigns the claim to a buyer. The buyer immediately pays a lump sum and pursues the proceedings against the casino on their own account. Whatever they then obtain, they keep. The difference between purchase price and proceeds is their margin.
How high the lump-sum offers typically turn out
In the phone calls and emails that have reached us over the past months, the offers for claim sales repeatedly fell within a similar order of magnitude. Often between five and ten percent of the loss figure stated by the player. In one case it was 850 euros paid out on a stated loss figure of around 9,500 euros. In another conversation a woman reported being offered 1,500 euros for roughly 18,500 euros in losses. Both figures are anonymised and slightly altered in amount; the ratio of loss to payout they reproduce accurately.
These rates are remarkably low in a sector where settlements with casino operators are, by experience, concluded in the region of two thirds to three quarters of the claim. A short calculation on a fictional example makes the mechanics visible.
Suppose a player lost 18,500 euros at a provider without an Austrian licence and sells her claim for 1,500 euros. The buyer then negotiates with the casino and reaches a settlement at 75 percent of the claim. That comes to 13,875 euros in proceeds. After deducting the 1,500 euros purchase price, the buyer keeps 12,375 euros. The player received 1,500 euros. Put differently: out of this transaction, around 1,500 euros flow to the player and around 12,000 euros to the buyer. That an individual case can turn out otherwise is beyond dispute. But this asymmetry is not bad luck or a losing streak. It is structurally built in wherever lump-sum prices are paid that make up only a fraction of what can later be obtained from the casino. Whoever, in hindsight, sets the sale price against the settlement proceeds sees the extent to which they were taken for a ride.
Why a rushed sale is inadvisable right now
On top of the already low level of the lump-sum offers, there is currently a timing aspect that speaks against a quick sale. The Austrian gambling market is in upheaval. For the online sector, an orderly awarding of licences is emerging, through which providers that until now operated here without a concession, and thus illegally, could in future appear legally.
In our assessment, this tends to shift the negotiating position of the harmed players in their favour. A provider seeking an Austrian licence has a considerable interest in no longer pushing open and enforceable claims down to a fraction, but in settling them seriously. Whoever gives up their claim for a flat fraction at precisely this moment may be forfeiting exactly this starting position.
Particular caution is therefore called for with offers that hold out a flat collective or general settlement in the order of around one third of the claim and are meant to be signed quickly, for instance with offers concerning claims against Interwetten. Next to the five to ten percent from the classic claim sale, one third sounds generous, yet it still lies well below what a properly conducted process can, by experience, achieve.
It becomes delicate above all when someone has already contractually assigned their claims to a litigation funder and then assigns the same claims, for instance via a lawyer, to another funder. The same claim cannot be validly transferred twice. Whoever nevertheless does so holds a claim that legally no longer belongs to them, can thereby expose themselves to claims for damages and, in the extreme case, become a defendant themselves, while the funder engaged first is left sitting on their outlay. An already-running contract with a litigation funder therefore belongs openly on the table before any further assignment. Whoever is unsure should have the situation independently reviewed before signing an additional settlement or assignment offer.
Why the offers are tempting all the same
Three reasons come up again and again in our conversations. The first is shame. Whoever has lost money for months often simply wants to end the story, ideally without explaining anything to family or bank. A quick payout promises exactly that. The second reason is the impression of certainty. A concrete amount in the account feels more reliable than proceedings with an uncertain outcome. The third reason is a lack of information about how the sector actually calculates. Whoever does not know the typical range can hardly place an offer.
“We see these patterns week after week today, in the enquiries that reach us,” says Ing. Ronald Mechtler, BA, MBA, managing director of R. M. Prozessfinanzierung GmbH. “Anyone who offers a few thousand euros for a five-figure claim knows very well what they expect from the casino. Anyone who calls on a gut feeling that something was not right back then has that gut feeling, in most cases, for good reason. The calculation belongs before the signature. If that did not happen back then, we make up for it afterwards, free of charge and with all the data on the table.”
Three warning signs that are already visible in a first email
From the conversations with those affected, patterns can be drawn that recur in the problematic cases in the same way again and again. They do not replace an individual review, but they are useful as an early warning.
First: A lump sum named without any inspection of the loss data. Whoever genuinely estimates the value of a claim needs a basis. Without loss records or transaction history, that basis simply does not exist. In such cases, lump-sum rates are usually calculated so that they remain viable for the buyer even in the worst conceivable course of events. For the player, that means a very tight price.
Second: A deed of assignment that arrives by email and is to be signed immediately. Serious contracts withstand the scrutiny of a second person, a trusted contact, a debt-counselling service or indeed a second review. When time pressure is applied, that is an indication that the lump sum might not survive a closer examination.
Third: Notices, weeks or months after the contract was concluded, that the settlement with the casino has unfortunately failed or that nothing came of it. In such cases we recommend having the status of the proceedings confirmed in writing and independently checking whether the casino really paid nothing. In some constellations it emerges that a settlement did in fact come about, but that the buyer worded the notice to the original player in such a way that no further questions would come.
These three patterns are, in a business model that aims to build trust over the long term, avoidable without effort. An inspection of the loss records before the price is set costs nothing but time. A written confirmation of the settlement obtained after conclusion is standard in any serious commercial dealing. A comprehensible explanation of why this particular lump sum should be fair is the minimum requirement for any contract that a player must later still be able to defend. That these three matters of course are not offered in parts of the sector is the actual business basis on which the margin between purchase price and later settlement proceeds can stay in the order of magnitude in which it regularly appears in the files. The gap in the information is the gap from which the margin comes.
What is often left unsaid in the sales conversation
Many people have respect or even fear of a court date, and that worry is understandable. It is precisely this feeling that some buyers play on in the sales conversation. Before the signature, they hold out to players the prospect that, after the sale, they will have nothing more to do with the matter and, above all, will not have to appear in court. This reassurance is a simplification that does not hold in every set of proceedings. Even after the claim has been assigned, the original player can be called as a witness in the buyer’s proceedings against the casino. Whoever wishes to rule out this possibility for themselves should clarify it before concluding the contract, and not only when the summons actually arrives.
What most players do not know about their own losses
At the centre of almost every conversation we hold at R. M. Prozessfinanzierung stands a sentence we hear again and again with small variations. “I think I lost roughly this or that much.” These sentences are not poor memories; they are the normal consequence of small and medium amounts being deposited over months, with the occasional win in between and much of it lost again. Whoever did not document this from the start can hardly reconstruct the true figure without help.
It is precisely in this gap that lump-sum offers work especially well. Whoever signs a contract without knowing the true loss figure is, in economic terms, comparing nothing at all. They hand over a claim whose value they do not themselves know, in exchange for an amount that often makes up only a small fraction of that value.
That is why, in every review, we obtain the complete loss records directly from the casino and hand them over unabridged to the player. On the table at the end lies an overview of all deposits, all payouts and the difference, which gives the actual loss. Whoever wishes can do the maths themselves. This transparency is, for us, at the core of how we work, and it is no matter of course in this sector. There are buyers who work with the estimate the player put forward when the contract was concluded and who never put the real records on the table. Only with the complete records is it possible to gauge at all what an offer was worth back then and to what degree a lump sum looks plausible or simply does not.
When the claim has already been sold
A portion of the enquiries that reach us come from people who sold a claim months or years ago and have become uncertain in hindsight. Sometimes because an acquaintance told a different story. Sometimes because the buyer’s notice that the settlement had not come about did not quite feel coherent. Sometimes because the loss records only surfaced later and it turned out that the loss figure originally stated was only a fraction of the actual one.
We review such already-completed claim sales free of charge. This is a service we deliberately offer separately from the litigation funding itself, because in this constellation it is often not about a new lawsuit, but first of all about an honest stocktaking. We obtain the information from the casino, we reconstruct the true loss figure, and we examine the deed of assignment from back then in detail. It pays off even when the sale was some time ago. In one part of the cases it turns out that, with that sale, everything really is settled and no further steps make sense. In another part, and that is more common than many of those affected assume, the second review yields points that support a closer examination. That can be a difference between the loss figure stated back then and the one provable today. That can be settlement proceeds about which the original seller was not fully informed afterwards. That can be a contract detail that, in the light of today’s data, reads differently than it did at the time of signing. What that means in the individual case we clarify not by email, but in a personal conversation.
“We cannot still achieve something in every case, and we do not promise that either,” Mechtler emphasises. “But we look at every matter calmly, free of charge and without pressure, and we say honestly whether a second attempt is worth it. No one should swallow the second question just because the first contract has already been signed.”
When you settled with the casino yourself
Not everyone sold their claim to a buyer. A growing share of the enquiries comes from players who settled directly with the casino, without legal representation and without a litigation funder, and accepted a one-off amount. The pattern behind it is the same as with a claim sale. Whoever settles without knowing the true loss figure is negotiating over a number they do not themselves know.
How large the gap between the amount accepted and the actual loss can be is shown by an anonymised example from practice. A player concluded a settlement on her own and accepted 5,400 euros. Only when the complete loss records were obtained later did the true extent emerge: around 94,000 euros in losses. The amount accepted thus corresponded to a good one twentieth of what was actually at stake. The player had not negotiated badly; she had negotiated on a false basis.
A settlement reached on such an incomplete basis is, in our experience, under certain circumstances open to a fresh legal review. Whether there are starting points in the specific case, we assess together with the cooperating lawyers. This review, too, is free of charge and with no minimum threshold. So whoever at some point settled themselves with one or more casinos and is uncertain in hindsight whether the basis was right back then should have these matters examined as well. What a settlement back then was really worth can only be judged with the complete loss records on the table.
Why there is no minimum threshold for the review
In a new lawsuit against an online casino, economic viability plays a role; that is the industry standard. In reviewing an already-completed claim sale, the situation is a different one. If the claim was worth a lump sum to a buyer back then, the calculation worked out for them. That is precisely why we review such cases with no minimum threshold. Even those who considered their sale at the time to be small should write to us. We look at the ratio and the course of events and say honestly what we see.
Should a further step emerge from this review that warrants its own engagement, we discuss the terms in detail before any signature. The review itself remains unaffected by this; it is and stays free of charge.
When a call to us is worth it
If you recognise one of the following signals, you belong to the group that contacts us most often, and in which a second review most often brings movement into the matter:
- In hindsight, you sold your claim too cheaply, or the lump sum was at twenty percent of the loss figure you stated at the time, or below.
- You settled with a casino yourself and accepted a one-off amount without knowing the true loss figure.
- A flat collective or general settlement is currently before you, to be signed quickly, possibly even though you have already assigned your claims to someone.
- You sold and have heard nothing more from the buyer since.
- You received the notice that the settlement with the casino had failed or that nothing came of it, without any evidence being provided to you.
- You know today that your real losses were higher than the figure you stated when you sold.
A first sorting is, in each of these cases, free of charge and without obligation. We obtain the complete loss records directly from the casino and hand them over to you unabridged, so that you can do the maths yourself on what actually happened. We then discuss together what the data ultimately shows.