Report - Part 1 SPORTS BETTING France
FRANCE SPORTS BETTING NO. OF BETTING SHOPS: 12,500 (PMU), 25,500 (FDJ) GGR: €2.5BN PMU(HORSE RACING, SPORTS BETTING AND POKER) HORSE TRACKS: 242 ONLINE MARKET: DECREE NO 2010-509 – MAY 2010 REMOTE BETTING GGR: €164M(SPORTS BETTING GGR) €246M(HORSE RACING GGR) €258M(POKER GGR) REMOTE LICENCES: 18OPERATORS WITH 30 LICENCES LICENSING: ARJEL
was legalised. Revenues increased rapidly whilst chari- ties are supported with profits.
In 2010 the monopoly ended and the market opened and gave other EU member states the opportunity to apply for a French gambling licence. This also saw the creation of ARJEL (French Autorite de Regulation des Jeux) and by 2012 there were 68 legal French online gambling sites.
Traditional casino games and spread betting were not included in the legislation and remain illegal for online gambling as they are viewed as highly addictive.
PMU
The PMU was created in 1930 by the French Horseracing Associations and is the biggest parimutuel operator in Europe and third largest worldwide and today also offers sports betting online and online poker.
F
rance’s gambling market has a very long history and dates back to the early 1500s whilst in the 17th century it was a French man called Blaise
Pascal who invented the roulette wheel. In 1836 the government banned all forms of gambling, other than horse racing, and basically drove it underground.
Although illegal lotteries and casinos thrived, sports betting was limited largely to horse racing. In 1867 parimutuel betting was invented although sports bet- ting arrived much later.
Bookies began to pop up after the 1880s offering sports lotteries, fixed odds and pool bets and this was seen as a threat to the horse racing industry and French parlia- ment banned (even though they were still illegal under the 1836 Act) all forms of fixed odds betting and non horse racing pool betting in 1891.
The same Act saw the arrival of the Pari Mutuel Hippodrome (PMH) which could legally accept pool bets on horse racing.
To gain control in the 1920 and 1930s various forms of
Francaise des Jeux (FDJ) is the operator of France’s national
lottery games and is owned and operated by the French
government. It is the second largest European lottery and fourth largest lottery in the world.
gambling became legal when using state owned betting companies. The main one being Francaise des Jeux (FDJ) for betting games and lotteries and Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU) for horse race betting.
For years these two remained the gambling monopolies until the laws relaxed. In 1983 pool betting greyhounds became legal and in 1987 the legal gambling age was reduced from 21 to 18 and in 1987 Basque Pelota betting
The company is made up of 58 horse racing associations which are headed by two parents companies – France Galop and Le Trot.
The French horseracing sector organises more than 2,000 meets a year with on average eight races per meeting. Some 12,000 of these races are open to betting via the PMU. France Gallop and Le Trot (Cheval Francais) are the racing associations responsible for the organising the races in France.
Since 2010 PMU has offered bets on sporting events in partnership with Paddy Power and also poker in part- nership with Bwin Party.
PMU saw €199m stakes for its sport betting sector out of a total of €844m bets in the market in total whilst poker saw €569.9m bets out of a market total of €6.5bn.
The company saw a total of €9.16bn bets on horse rac- ing last year with a 75.3 percent return of €7.5bn in win- nings paid out.
PMU has some six million customers and a distribution network of 12,500 outlets in France. There are 540,000
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