SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
AFJEL, the trade body representing France’s regulated online betting operators, has blamed illegal bookmakers targeting French punters for a poor Euro 2024, which revealed “surprisingly low or even decreasing figures” for the country’s legal bookmakers when compared with past major sporting events.
The association said data from dot.fr bookmakers showed that Euro 2024 stakes were flat compared to Euro 2020 and were down around 25% compared to figures for the 2022 World Cup, when they recorded €597m in stakes and France reached the final.
The amounts wagered by French players were “very far from the announced record” and were in fact 50% lower (i.e. under €500m) than the €1bn estimates the regulator Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) had predicted when the event kicked off a month ago, said AFJEL.
It added that the Euro 2024 figures revealed “abnormally low figures” in view of the French team reaching the semi-finals and were “the opposite of what has been observed in other
European markets”.
The results came in a context where the sector had already experienced a flat 2022 and in 2023 has seen the number of active players drop 5.3% across all verticals to 3.6 million.
AFJEL said this confirmed “the massive diversion of players from the legal offer to the illegal market”, which is believed to account for around 4 million players, and went against all “European trends and the digitalisation of the sector”.
The size of the illegal online casino market is estimated at €1.5bn-€2bn and while the size of the illegal online sports betting is not known, it is believed to be sizable and profitable enough for unregulated sportsbooks to target France.
AFJEL added that while the prospect of positive regulatory changes such as the legalisation of online casino were not on the cards currently, illegal iCasinos openly and in all “impunity” promoted betting markets on the Euros.
Nicolas Béraud, President of AFJEL, said the figures were “the polar opposite of the so-called online sports betting frenzy” that some media outlets were predicting that while legal operators “played the game in accordance with ANJ guidelines” and consumer protection rules “the illegal market is now continuing its very strong expansion through the cannibalisation of the online sports betting sector by diverting players from the legal offer”.
