France Online Gambling Regime in Place

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There was one last step left in the process of establishing a regulated online gambling regime in France. With the issuing of the first lot of licenses on June 8, this last step was also completed.

ARJEL is the designated regulatory authority that will issue licenses for online horse racing, sports betting and poker. Online casino gambling will continue to be illegal. Jean-Francois Vilotte of ARJEL informed the press that in all 24 companies had applied for 35 licenses across the three areas. Of these, 11 companies have been issued 17 licenses. The horse racing and sports betting licensees can start accepting bets immediately. This implies that French punters can legally place wagers on the Football World Cup that starts on June 11. The poker licensees will have to probably wait till the end of June because the Maltese government has filed a complaint with the European Commission and that matter needs to be attended to.

There are some known names in the list of licensees. BetClic.com owner Unibet Enterprises Limited received licenses under all three categories. Everest Gaming Limited, which operates the popular online poker room Everest Poker, received a poker license. BES SAS the owners of the bwin brand also received licenses from ARJEL. Most of the other companies whose applications were approved were French companies. Most were issued licenses for horse racing and sports betting and some received licenses for poker as well.

None of the applications has yet been rejected. Vilotte clarified during the press conference, "Certain files of application remain in the course of instruction. There are several reasons that these applications are still under review, including the need for additional information from the applicants. The fact that these companies were not a part of the first issuance of licenses does not prejudge any decision on their application." Microgaming is one of the prominent parties not yet given licenses. Microgaming had applied for licenses in conjunction with the operator 888.com. PartyGaming had combined with the popular Parisian land casino Aviation Club De France and applied for a poker license for ACFPoker.com. It is also on the pending list.

A third category of operators is the one that had not applied for a license under the new French online gambling regime due to doubts about the fairness of the rules and regulations. These include Sportingbet, Betfair and William Hill. All of them will be closely watching developments in the free era of French online gambling. This free era has come 471 years after King Francois I established a state monopoly on gambling in 1539. Since then all gambling has been under the authority of the state.

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