Partouche to leave dot.fr poker market
Operator will close its French site on 17 June, with players transferred to MyPok.fr
Partouche Interactive is to leave the French online poker market following a review of its online operations earlier this year.
The operator’s parent company Groupe Partouche highlighted egaming as a potential area for cutting costs in a bid to reduce its 193m debt after posting a 10.1% year-on-year decline in online revenues for the year ended 31 December 2012.
It will close its dot.fr room on 17 June, with players transferred to MyPok.fr, which relaunched on Partouche’s French-facing network late last year. The shutdown sees MyPok left as the only site still active on the network.
In a statement released alongside its 2012 results Partouche blamed the “difficult economic environment” for the poor results. France’s online poker market saw revenues slide by 13% year-on-year in the three months ended 31 March, coming in at 72m.
A number of licensees including 888 and TitanPoker returning their dot.fr licences over the last 12 months, prompting ARJEL president Jean-François Vilotte to describe the vertical’s performance as “a matter of concern”.
Partouche will remain active in Belgium, where it has online agreements in place with bwin.party and Williams Interactive.