Sports rebound offsets French poker decline

French-licensed operators have seen an increase in gross gaming revenues from sports betting, regulator ARJEL has revealed in its market analysis for the three months ended 31 March.

However, despite a 26% increase in tournament entries, poker revenues dropped 3% compared to the corresponding period in 2011, with much of the decline coming from the 18-24 age demographic.

Entry fees for tournament poker rose from €292m to €367m for the three-month period, but this was offset by cash game amounts wagered falling 5% from €2bn to €1.7bn. Average monthly deposits for poker were relatively stable, coming in at €73 compared to €74 in Q1 2011.

The poker figures come partly as a result of some French-licensed operators changing their methods of calculating rake from cash games. These operators also submitted like-for-like numbers which saw the cash game figure come in at €1.93bn. Accounting for this, the French online poker market still experienced a slight overall decline.

However GGR from sports betting rose 7% year-on-year to €37m, its highest figure since Q3 2010, with the number of active players dropping slightly from 111,000 to 109,000. For horse betting the figure rose 20% to €69m.

Sports bets placed totalled €175m for the quarter, up 20% year-on-year, with all sports except tennis showing an increase compared to Q1 2011.

The biggest drop came from the 18-24 age group, which experienced a 20% decline in active player accounts for poker and a 44% decline in sports betting.

Another area to show improvement was mobile betting, with 15% of sports bettors using their mobile, smartphone or tablet to place a bet during the quarter. For horse betting the figure grew to 12% of players, while the proportion of poker players using mobile devices more than trebled to 15%.

The figure for poker could well increase in the light of PokerStars, second to Winamax for market share, launching a French-facing mobile client last month.