France’s online gaming trade body AFJEL states its focus is on combatting the illegal market and called for iCasino regulation but also led to a swift rebuke from the country’s largest casino groups.  

AFJEL President Nicolas Béraud called on the French authorities to do everything they can to stop the spread of illegal gambling in France and to balance the country’s regulatory framework to make legal operators’ offerings more attractive as he opened AFJEL’s annual general meeting in Paris yesterday.

Béraud, who is also chairman of Banijay Gaming following Betclic’s 65% majority stake in Germany’s leading bookmaker Tipico, was speaking as the French iGaming trade body published a study revealing that the number of French consumers playing on illegal sites had increased 35% to 5.4 million in the past two years, with casino dominating and eSports betting in unlicensed sites also rising fast.

In his speech, Béraud highlighted the fragile balance on which the country’s industry operates. Criticising the tax rises that came into force in July, he also pointed to the “lack of coherence” of measures such as the 15% tax on operators’ media and marketing spend that will hit activities like sport sponsorships.

“What is the meaning of these intentions?” he asked rhetorically, “one cannot tell that sports (bodies) must find private money to compensate for cuts in public funding and, on the other hand, threaten their new partners with taxation because of their support for sport.

“Moreover, why should only online gaming companies be taxed on their sponsorship spend? Why make our sector the exception among other sponsors, whether they be airlines, supermarkets or other consumer brands? How can we continue to support sport if everything is being done to dissuade us. This is not a complaint, but a call for coherence.”

The report commissioned by AFJEL into illegal gambling dominated French headlines on Tuesday, but they also drew a swift and aggressive rebuke from the country’s casino lobby. The Casinos de France trade group representing the country’s largest operators countered that AFJEL’s claim that the French state could recoup €1.2bn in taxes if it regulated “online casinos would not generate any benefit for society. On the contrary, it would lead to massive job losses, the disappearance of dozens of establishments, a reduction in the means of action available to local authorities, and a weakening of social and economic ties”.

The trade body added that iCasino legalisation “would result in a net annual loss of €546m to public finances, taking into account the indirect effects on health and employment in the regions”.

CdF contacts SBC-&-GamingCo spoke to at the AFJEL event did not hide their anger at AFJEL’s campaign. “It’s simply unacceptable,” commented one of them, “and the fact that we have not been invited to speak on any of the panels is also very poor.”

As part of CdF’s press release, Grégory Rabuel, President of Casinos de France and CEO of the Groupe Barrière, commented that “the €1.2bn ‘shortfall’ cited by AFJEL does not exist. It is a mirage, and worse, it is a loss for the State: destruction of local jobs, reduction in municipal budgets, drying up of cultural life in communities… Not to mention the impact on the mental health of the French people, which would amount to hundreds of millions in additional costs for Social Security.”

AFJEL spokesperson Isabelle Djian-Lignon told SBC that the numbers published were not inflated, “if anything they are underestimated as there are now more players in the illegal market than on the legal market, it’s endemic,” she commented.

Putting in place the best measures to channel players to legal websites, fair taxes and EU-wide enforcement were called for by many of the speakers at the event. Off the record, delegates praised the tech and online focus of their teams and those of their counterparts in the industry; and all agreed that the best way to guarantee a healthy and secure environment for French players was to make the legal offering of regulated operators as attractive as possible.