Barrière closes dot.fr poker room
Operator latest to withdraw from the French online poker market which it describes as "structurally bearish"
Barrière Poker has announced the closure of its French online poker room citing difficulties in the country’s regulated online poker market.
The firm said its barrierepoker.fr site would cease operating commercially on 30 September after maintaining a three-year presence and said the decline of the poker market was a significant contributing factor in the closure.
The deal is not thought to affect the deal with Caesars Interactive Entertainment that will see the two firms partnering on a real-money online poker site to be built by Barrière.
In a statement the operator said it took the decision due to poor economic conditions and a dot.fr poker sector which has been “structurally bearish for over a year now, with degradation increasing quarter after quarter”.
“ARJEL (l’Autorité de Régulation des Jeux en Ligne) also confirmed the sharp decline of poker in France in the second quarter of 2013, correlated with a decline in the pool of players for the sixth consecutive quarter,” it added.
According to figures from the French regulatory body, gross gambling revenue in the regulated French market fell 12% year-on-year to 135m for the first six months of 2013. Turnover also declined 14% year-on-year to 2.7bn and the number of active players was down 7% to 906,000.
The closure of barrierepoker.fr follows the withdrawal of Partouche Interactive from the French online market. Nine poker licensees, including 888 and TitanPoker, had previously handed back their dot.fr licences after poor performance.
Earlier this year, ARJEL president Jean-François Vilotte said the disappointing demand for online poker in France was “a matter of concern”.