Paris gaming clubs hit by government upheavals

Amid France’s ongoing political chaos Gaming clubs in Paris could be forced to close on 31 December due to lack of legal status. 

Kafkaesque is a description used for unexpected and surreal situations occurring because of unintended consequences or scenarios that no one could have planned for. The tough and seemingly terminal spot Paris’s gaming clubs find themselves in two weeks before the end of the year definitely fits that bill.

President Macron is receiving the centrist MP François Bayrou this morning and a new PM should be announced later today, but the lack of a draft Budget 2025 remains the sticking point.

The French capital has seven cercles de jeux offering table games, but no roulette or slots that launched in 2018 as part of an experiment to assess the impact of having gaming establishments in the capital, rather than in tourist and spa towns where casinos are usually based.

The experiment period finishes on 31 December and the clubs, which were due to be made permanent fixtures on Paris’s gambling scene, will instead have to put the key under the mat on that day. This is despite the operators and the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees them, agreeing on the experiment’s success and that they should continue their activities.

Dissolution despair

The reason for the closures is the dissolution of the National Assembly by Emmanuel Macron and last week’s censure of France’s government.

A law that would have made the move official was being worked on during the summer, but this can not happen without a draft Budget, which is not going to happen in 2024.

At risk are 1,500 jobs. Some clubs will try to find a way to keep operating in the hope that a new Budget text can be drafted quickly, but the situation is dire and impossible to predict.

In the wake of the news, PokerStars has cancelled the European Poker Tour Paris event that was scheduled for February at the Club Barrière. The group said “the current uncertainty  surrounding licensing requirements has left us with no alternative”.

The announcement read: “PokerStars and Club Barrière remain committed to collaborating with local authorities to achieve a more stable regulatory framework. We remain optimistic that this will pave the way for the return of one of the most beloved stops on the EPT circuit.”

Grégory Rabuel, CEO of Groupe Barrière Groupe and Chairman of the trade body Casinos de France, said: “We support all club operators on the eve of this disaster and we want to believe that it can still be avoided. Exceptional circumstances call for measures that must be taken as a matter of urgency. We call on the public authorities to help us.”