That was kind of short-lived, wasn’t it? The online gambling community recently celebrated France finally liberalizing their online gambling market, allowing foreign competition for the first time. Now that everyone has looked more closely at the new laws and everything else involved, some online gambling operators aren’t as enthusiastic.
In Monte Carlo, major players in the online gambling industry got together for the iGaming conference in order to discuss various topics of concern to them. One major topic that repeatedly came up was a complaint about the French regulatory laws for their new gambling industry.
The complaint is that France’s gambling market is overregulated and that too much regulation hurts anyone who tries to enter that market. The two main complaints are high taxes and strict payout limits. The tax rate for any online gambling operator who wants to do business in France is 40% of revenues. Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of ChiliGaming, called the 40% tax rate “painful” for operators. David Zerah, CEO of Dragonfish (the B2B arm of 888.com), said that the French went too far in regulating the industry and that the overregulation may take away any advantages of joining the new French market.
Aside from the steep tax rate, the government placed a strict limit of 85% on what the gambling operators are able to pay back to players. The payout limit is intended to protect the players, but according to some, it is causing customers to play at foreign websites that offer a better return.
Zerah questioned whether it could be profitable to enter the French market considering the high tax rate and the possibility of losing those French customers to other casinos that don’t have the strict payout limit. Emmanuel de Rohan Chabot, CEO of Zeturf, echoed that sentiment, saying that the payback limit would make it “very hard” for them to retain French players rather than losing them to overseas operators. Tarquin Henderson, a senior marketing executive for Mangas Gaming, called for the French government to create a more open and free market, where the market itself is responsible for the protection.
Not everyone criticized the French regulations, though. PMU’s chief of international development, Aymeric Verlet, praised the government for liberalizing the market and said that the priority of the government should be preventing illegal unlicensed casinos from operating in France. He said that if France can rid the market of competition from illegal operators, the tax rate is something they can live with.
Tags: France gambling laws, French online casino, gambling regulation
