French Bill Could Open Internet Gambling Market

September 30th, 2009
 

France only allows online gambling services to be held by state lottery provider Groupe Francaise des Jeux and Pari Mutuel Urbain, which runs gambling on horseracing. All other online betting is currently banned, but this monopoly on internet gambling might be ending soon as next month the French Parliament could approve a bill that would allow sports betting and online poker to be offered by foreign operators.

One of the reasons France is considering the issue is a response to some estimates which calculate that over 75% of web bets are placed at 25,000 illegal gambling sites accessible from France. These sites belong to the same offshore companies that would now be allowed to enter the online gambling competition, but they’d still need to go through an application and approval process, and other online casino games will stay illegal.

Revenues missed from taxes are thought to be close to the billion of Euros -or even more, but if the bill comes into effect a 7.5 percent tax has already been proposed for sports bets and a 2 percent tax on poker wagers. According to rough calculations, sales from electronic gambling in France could reach as much as 992 million Euros.