FDJ, TF1 sign French TV deal ahead of June
Française des Jeux (FDJ) and TF1, France's largest commercial TV channel, have signed an online gaming and sponsorship agreement ahead of the liberalisation of the French egaming market expected in June...
FRANCAISE DES Jeux (FDJ) and TF1, France’s largest commercial TV channel, have signed an online gaming and sponsorship agreement ahead of the liberalisation of the French egaming market expected in June.
The three-year partnership will see FDJ, France’s betting and lottery monopoly, sponsor a number of TV shows on TF1 and provide a dedicated egmaing space on the channel’s website, TF1.fr, which has around 15 million unique visitors every month, according to a joint statement by both companies.
TF1 is part of the Bouygues conglomerate, which is also the parent company of Eurosport TV and SPS Betting, the egaming firm operating Eurosportsbet, and recorded a turnover of 2.26bn in 2009.
FDJ, meanwhile, had a turnover of 9.9bn in 2009 and is the second biggest lottery operator in the world behind Italy’s Lottomatica.
The egaming site on TF1 will provide lottery and sports betting products to French punters and the channel’s porgramming will include exclusive content related to betting and gaming sponsored by FDJ in time for the football World Cup in June.
The partnership will also give TF1 the opportunity to exploit some of FDJ’s scratch card game formats, which represented around 3.8bn of the monopoly’s turnover last year, with popular TF1 shows appearing on FDJ scratch cards.
As reported on EGRmagazine.com last week, FDJ appointed software company LVS to deliver a fixed-odds product that will see FDJ compete against France’s pools betting monopoly Pari Mutuel Urbain, which revealed it would offer fixed odds sports betting in May last year and signed a deal with Paddy Power to provide PMU with fixed-odds risk management and pricing tools in December.
In other French news this month, operators including Betclic, Bwin and Unibet will no longer be forced to shut down their player accounts before being granted a licence this year after a measure to force operators wanting to be licensed in France to close their current French customers’ accounts from the time the law is voted until the licences are awarded was revoked by the French Senate.
This story first appeared on the website of eGaming Review’s French media partner, iGaming France.
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