French GGR grows 22% in Q1 despite Covid-19 impact
Online poker play skyrockets to record level following sports shutdown and lockdown measures
French gross gaming revenue (GGR) grew 22% year-on-year for Q1 2020 to reach €435m despite the impact of Covid-19 on the country’s gambling industry.
According to data released by French regulator ARJEL, GGR across sports betting, horseracing and online poker all increased year-on-year during the first quarter.
Sports betting accounted for 60% of total Q1 revenue at €263m to mark an 18% annual increase.
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic becomes clear when January and February are compared with March. For the first two months of the year, total sports bets were up 11% compared to 2019, while in March that figure plummeted 40%.
Football continues to be the largest vector within French sports betting, with €162m in GGR derived from the sport. Tennis (€38.4m) was the second largest sport, with basketball (€32.6m) coming in third.
Total bets placed on ‘other sports’ skyrocketed some 39% year-on-year, which could be explained by niche games such as table tennis (€9.8m) and badminton (€6.1m) picking up the slack during the sports shutdown.
Horseracing continued to remain popular in France, with total bets placed (€300m) and GGR (€74m) both growing 10% year-on-year.
Online poker grew exponentially, exacerbated by lockdown measures put in place to quell the spread of Covid-19 as the vertical accounted for 23% of total Q1 GGR.
GGR for online poker was recorded at €98m, which marks both a 44% year-on-year increase and a record GGR for any quarter according to ARJEL.
The total number of players within the French gambling industry grew 17% year-on-year, hitting 2.6 million accounts. The number of poker players leapt 41% to 906,000, once again highlighting the spike in popularity during lockdown.
In a statement, ARJEL noted the overall impact of Covid-19 on the industry would not be decipherable until data from the rest of 2020 is collected.
ARJEL said: “The full effect of the health crisis cannot be truly appreciated only in the consolidated data for the second quarter, as well as that of following quarters.”