Olympics boost fails to mask French poker woes

The impact of the London Olympic Games helped French-licensed operators record a 14% increase in sports betting amounts staked during the third quarter of 2012, regulatory authority ARJEL has confirmed in its market figures for the three months ended 30 September.

eGaming Review reported earlier his year that more than €19m was staked on July’s games by French punters, a comparable figure to the Italian market, with football, basketball and handball all proving popular.

However gross gaming revenue (GGR) for the vertical was down year-on-year, falling 2% to €27m, while horse betting and poker also experienced a year-on-year GGR decline.

Horse betting GGR fell 6% to €61m, although amounts staked of €260m represented a 2% increase on the corresponding period in 2011.

Meanwhile GGR for poker dropped by 5% year-on-year to €70m, with a 20% rise in tournament entries (from €265m to €318m) overshadowed by a 12% decline from dot.fr operators’ cash games as the number of active dot.fr poker players fell by 10% to 700,000.

One worrying trend is the declining number of players in the 18-24 age-bracket, 22% of whom (approximately 58,000 players) no longer have active accounts with French-licensed operators. The decline has been most striking in the sports betting vertical with the age group contributing 23% of players compared to 39% in Q3 2011, however horse betting (down from 7% to 5%) and poker (24% to 20%) have also experienced declines.

There was another bright spot, namely that an increasing number of players are using mobile or tablet devices to gamble. Some 20% of poker players are doing so, compared to 19% for sports betting and 15% for horse betting.

The number of poker players using smartphones or tablets has more than doubled year-on-year to 152,700, while both sports betting and horse betting have seen increased uptake from the devices.