French market up despite poker struggles
Gross gaming revenue of 698m represents year-on-year increase of almost 4%.
The regulated French egaming market has seen gross gaming revenue rise by 3.9% year-on-year, despite the country’s poker market contracting in size over the last 12 months.
Full year figures from regulatory authority ARJEL saw GGR across poker, sports and horse betting come in at 698m, up from 672m in 2011, with the figure for sports betting up 19% year-on-year to 138m. The total is in line with H2 Gambling Capital’s predictions, with eGaming Review‘s data partner estimating gross win of 694m in data published in November.
Amounts staked across all verticals came in at 9.4bn, down 1% compared to the previous 12 months based on like-for-like figures, however this was largely due to amounts staked in poker cash games declining by 5.4% on a like-for-like basis.
The French market, however now has only 22 licensees compared to the 35 licensed at the end of 2011, with nine poker licences repealed over the course of the year and only two new licences issued and one of those new licensees, Poker Leaders, failing to launch.
A number of poker operators withdrew from the French market in 2012, the most recent being 888 which returned its dot.fr licence in December. There was also some consolidation in the market as MyPok and PokerXtrem merged, with the combined entity absent from the market for several months before returning as part of the Partouche network before the end of the year.
The country’s sports betting market was boosted by the Olympic Games, with the 19m staked on the London event contributing to a 14% year-on-year rise in amounts staked in the third quarter of the year. Indeed the Olympics represented 3% of amounts staked on sports by French punters over the whole of the year.
Over the course of 2012, the rise in sports betting amounts staked was even higher with 705m staked compared to 592m in 2011, while poker tournament entries somewhat compensated for the cash game decline, rising 21% to 1.4bn.
The fourth quarter saw sports betting GGR rise by 39%, more than making up for a slight decline in Q3, while horse betting experienced a 4% increase. However gross gaming revenue for poker fell 2% year-on-year for the quarter, meaning the vertical had experienced a GGR decline in every quarter of 2012.