SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Following its summer recess, France’s new ‘unified federal authority’ for gambling L’Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) has confirmed that it has renewed a further 10 online sportsbook licences.
Since its foundation last June, ANJ has taken over full responsibility of licensing requirements for France’s regulated online gambling marketplace from former regulatory incumbent ARJEL.
2020 marks the 10th anniversary of France launching its regulated online gambling marketplace, in which ANJ has renewed a total of 14 operator licences for sports betting approval.
At present, the French online gambling market maintains a total of 19 licensed operators which service provisions for sports betting, horseracing and online gambling services.
Taking over licensing responsibilities, ANJ confirmed that it has accepted only one new operator ‘GENY INFO’ to join France’s sports betting marketplace, with the incumbent allowed to launch specialist racing bookmaker ‘GenyBet’.
For sports betting, ANJ added that its licensing renewals will be set for a period of five years, dependent on strict operator conduct related to upholding player protections, AML, sports integrity and safer gambling advertising.
In its update, ANJ confirmed that its renewed operators have changed website terms and conditions to reference its regulatory authority, in addition to operators registering their operating software with ANJ monitoring systems to ‘ensure player guarantees’.
Further ANJ developments have seen BetConstruct’s European B2C subsidiary Vivaro Limited licensing provisions expanded, allowing the company to launch barrierebet.fr in partnership with French heritage hotels and leisure operator Groupe Barrière.
Closing its statement, ANJ reports that in the first 6 months of 2020 the ‘overall GGR of the approved online market reached €758m – an increase of 8% compared to the first half of 2019’.
