French poker revenues continue to slide
PMU bucks trend as French online poker GGR drops 10% year-on-year with only sports betting showing growth
The French online poker market continued its slump during Q1 2014 with country’s regulator reporting a 10% year-on-year fall in gross gaming revenue (GGR), with sports betting the only bright spot in a disappointing quarter.
According to figures released by l’Autorité de regulation des jeux en ligne (ARJEL), poker GGR fell to 65m last quarter, compared to 72m in the same period last year.
The total amount staked on online poker also fell from 1.5bn in Q1 2013 to 1.2bn in the first three months of 2014, while the number of active players declined 12% year-on-year.
But the French sports betting market performed well after recording a 22% year-on-year increase in turnover which ARJEL attributed to a strong performance from football.
“French online poker operators, even more than horse racing, are struggling to recover an activity which began its decline more than two years ago,” ARJEL said in a statement.
News of ARJEL’s Q1 results come as former French monopoly Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU), however, bucked the trend and reported its poker revenue rose 9.2% year-on-year to 151.8m following the launch of the operator’s first mobile poker apps, which PMU claims to have taken a 10% share of the market in their first few months.
The French horse racing market also fared poorly for the third quarter in a row with stakes down 12% to 269m and GGR down 8% year-on-year to 66m, a fall the regulator described as the vertical’s “first significant decrease”.
PMU reported total revenues were down 3.4% in Q1 2014 as domestic horseracing revenue slipped by 7.4% year-on-year to 2.18bn.
But the operator said sports betting revenue was up 17% year-on-year to 57.6m, driven largely by an 88% rise in betting on mobile devices after the operator released new mobile apps towards the end of last year.
The French regulator recently appointed Charles Coppolani as its new president, replacing the outgoing Jean-François Vilotte, with a remit to create “optimal economic conditions” for operators.