comment
Julian Harris, Partner, Harris Hagan harris@harrishagan. com
After operating a state monopoly over online gambling for many years, France began issuing licences in June 2010 through its regulatory authority, ARJEL. It is necessary for a remote gambling operator to obtain a French licence in order to transact legally with French customers. Licences are currently restricted to horse race betting, sports betting and poker, but the new law is soon to be subject to a review (scheduled for 18 months after the law came into force), and at that time it may be extended to other gambling products.
The requirements imposed on licensees (including the requirement that customers send hard copies of their identification documents to the operator by post), the time consuming application process and, in particular, the tax rates (5.7% of all stakes on horserace and sports betting; 1.8% of poker stakes) combine to make the French market unattractive for most operators. A further issue is the inclusion in the legislation of a ‘betting right’ which gives the organisers of sporting events the right to charge a fee to gambling operators who wish to offer bets on events. A horserace betting right was also included in the legislation, but has yet to be implemented. The market has not developed as new licensees hoped, with some companies (such as Ladbrokes) obtaining a licence but then withdrawing from the market when it proved unprofitable. The incumbent monopoly operators still enjoy the lion’s share of the online gambling market in France, something which cynics would say was always the intention.
Holes in the regulatory regime in France were exposed recently when ARJEL was forced to suspend Full Tilt’s operating licence following the suspension of its licence in Alderney, where its primary gambling server is based. Although French regulations require operators to hold French customers’ deposits in a separate bank account it appears that this requirement was not being enforced, as French customers were unable to withdraw funds from their Full Tilt accounts.
shops which is where the majority of gambling revenues are made. This, coupled with brand recognition, gave them an early advantage over the competition.
In the beginning Francaise des Jeux partnered with Groupe Lucien Barriere to launch the
Barrierepoker.fr brand and enter the French online poker market. The group has also run its own sports betting sites since 2009 when it launched parionsweb. In 2009 the site took €91m in bets.
FDJ acquired betting software supplier LVS in 2010 and then in January won the contract to deliver fixed odds sports betting online for FDJ once the online sports market opened.
Meanwhile PMU has a network of some 11,000 horse racing sales outlets and some 6.5 million customers and is expecting a turnover of €10bn this year with at least €1.2bn of this generated from its online sector. In 2009 the
pmu.fr betting website had some 300,000 active accounts and saw a turnover of €660m which was an increase of 22 per cent from the previous year. PMU has 15 per cent of the online market and 500,000 online clients. Q1/2011 internet clients wagered €317.6m.
PMU is partnered with Paddy Power to develop its range of online sports whilst the company also signed a deal with Party Gaming to provide it with an online poker product.
while the technical
RequiRements aRe excellent, they
leave much to the inteRpRetation of the
thiRd-paRty test houses.
BetClic Everest Group is a leading online gaming company with four international brands – Everest Gaming, BetClic, Bet-at-home and Expekt. The group has customers in 100 countries numbering around 12 million in total. Betclic was created in 2005 by French entrepreneurs and is the founding brand of the BEtClic Everest Group.
technical standaRds While the French government only recently opened up their iGaming industry to foreign operators, their regulatory body, ARJEL came out of the gates with strict technical standards that speak to many of the critical issues in the iGaming industry.
ARJEL’s technical standard, entitled Ouverture a la Concurrence et a la Regulation du Secteur des Jeux D’argent en Ligne, Dossier des Exigences Techniques, version 1.0, requires operators to enlist the help of their selected third-party test house to produce and submit three specific assessment reports relating to the source code for the games and system. These assessments are aimed at verifying the integrity, security and reliability of the gaming software.
The first assessment is comprised of a thorough sweep of application security testing, where any vulnerabilities in the web-facing software application are identified and evaluated. The report must contain significant detail, including:
• The methods used to analyse the source code.
• A complete list of all vulnerabilities identified.
• A detailed description of each vulnerability
• An in-depth analysis of the impact of each vulnerability.
• Discussion on plans for any necessary corrective or risk-mitigating action.
The second assessment is comprised of an
32
fRance
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68