Jun 11 2010

Regulated Online Gambling Market in France

France has finalized the process of regulating online gambling within the country and they issued the first 11 licenses on June 8 to make the process official and in place. The French have designated a regulatory authority ARJEL to issue licenses for online horse racing, sports betting and poker service providers; however, online casino gambling continues to be illegal in the country.

A spokesman from ARJEL, Jean-Francois Vilotte informed that 24 companies have applied for the 35 licenses that will be issued. Out of those, 11 companies were issued 17 licenses so far and the horse racing and sports betting licensed companies can start taking bets immediately, meaning that the French are already able to place bets on the World Cup starting on June 11th. On the other hand, the poker services providers will have to wait until the end of this month to start operating as the Maltese government has filed a complaint with the European Commission which needs to be resolved previous to the beginning of poker operations.

Some of the licensees include Unibet Enterprises Ltd, which received licenses on the three categories. Everest Gaming Ltd also got a license as they operate the most popular poker room in France Everest Poker. BES SAS, owner of Bwin also was granted a license and most of the other companies which got licensed are local and focus mostly on horse racing and sports betting, even though there are a few poker ones as well.

As of today some of the companies which applied for a license have not been granted one but they have also not been rejected from the process. “Certain files of application remain in the course of instruction. There are several reasons that these applications are still under review, including the need for additional information from the applicants. The fact that these companies were not a part of the first issuance of licenses for regulated online gambling in France does not prejudge any decision on their application,” stated Vilotte at a press conference.

Among the giants of online gambling that have not been granted a license to operate in the French online gambling market is MicroGaming, they applied in conjunction with 888.com for a poker license and they are on the pending list. We will keep you updated on the licenses to come.