888 hands back French licence
Departure of operator effectively ends Microgaming poker JV " Pokersubito.fr, Sofun Gaming and Betkup.fr also withdraw from market.
888 Holdings is the latest operator to withdraw from the French market, relinquishing its online poker licence, with Ad Astra, Sofun Gaming and Betkup.fr also pulling out of the territory.
The departures of 888 and Ad Astra, which operated the Pokersubito.fr site, effectively marks the closure of the poker network joint venture, established by 888 and Microgaming, with no sites currently active on the network.
The network lost the PokerXtrem and MyPok skins when the sites merged in July this year, before the newly-combined site reopened last week having migrated to Partouche’s French network. One of the network’s previous incumbents, 200% Poker, shut down in July 2011 after lying dormant since May of the same year.
Despite signs of growth in sports betting and horse racing the French poker market has seen a steady decline, with gross gaming revenue declining 11% year-on-year in the second quarter of the year and with the number of active dot.fr players dropping by 10% to 700,000 in the three months ending 30 September 2011.
Just yesterday ARJEL confirmed changes to sports betting legislation, banning bookmakers from offering bets on football and basketball matches which have no bearing on European qualification; promotion or relegation; or league championships.
The strict regulatory terms and high tax rate saw the majority of eGaming Review readers describe the French market as having failed in a September poll.
This decline contrasts 888’s strong poker performance in other markets, with the company second in the liquidity rankings behind PokerStars in Spain, having doubled revenues for the vertical since the opening of the country’s egaming market in June.
Such growth has helped the operator buck the trend of decline in the global poker with revenues up 21% to US$22m in the third quarter of the year.