ANJ urges French giants to lead fight against fraud

Operators’ anti-fraud and RG policies praised as ANJ calls on the heritage giants of FDJ and PMU to improve retail checks

France’s Autorité Nationale des Jeux has approved FDJ United’s and Pari Mutuel Urbain’s plans to reduce excessive gambling, but has called on the two groups to step up their efforts to ensure strict compliance with the ban on sales to minors in their retail networks.

France’s ‘historic’ operators will have to strengthen their systems for identifying and supporting excessive gamblers, in particular by implementing an identified user experience in sales outlets in 2025 and a training and control plan for retailers.

ANJ’s call coincided with the publication of its annual review of gambling operators’ prevention plans for problem and underage gambling. The key objective being to reduce the revenues and volumes generated by excessive and/or underage gamblers, the Authority said the topic was “one of the most significant risks” for the French market and “despite the legal ban, underage gambling is a reality”.

Online moves, uneven casinos

With regard to the online sector, ANJ stated that its “policy of strong support for compliance” had been “generally successful for the online gambling market”, but also noted that “despite the substantial progress made over the last four years, problem gambling still occupies too large a place in the online gambling market”.

ANJ has therefore asked digital operators to improve their identification standards and they will also have to demonstrate tangible and verifiable results, particularly on the most high risk products such as fast poker tournaments and live betting.

The regulator said French casinos had shown “improvements overall in their compliance” levels, but they were still “uneven: some groups continue to improve by seeking to adopt the sector’s best practices” while “others have made little progress since 2021”, said ANJ.

The monitoring of problem gamblers in casinos ‘is the common thread running through the work undertaken’ and the ANJ has introduced an e-learning system with examples of practical solutions. Launched in November 2024, more than 760 people have completed the module.

In horse racing, the Fédération nationale des courses hippiques has made significant efforts; and ANJ invited it to continue its actions to protect minors and identify and support problem gamblers at racecourses.

In 2024, the Observatory for Drugs and Toxicology (OFDT) estimated that there were 1.17 million problem gamblers, including 360,000 excessive gamblers in France and that the proportion of GGR generated by problem gamblers stood at 38.3% in 2019, including 20.7% of the total originating from excessive gamblers.

ANJ also published its report on the fight against fraud and money laundering and stated that the majority of licensed operators have complied with its guidelines and recommendations, indicating an overall improvement in compliance.

It noted a positive trend towards increased compliance, with the most significant advance being the detection of abnormal behaviour in customer accounts. In addition, operators have dedicated more staff and financial resources to surveilling these activities.

The quality of reports sent to TRACFIN, France’s national financial intelligence unit, has also improved, and ANJ reported improvements in three main areas: detection of atypical behaviour, resource management and internal control.