L’Autorite Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), France’s unified gambling regulator, has published its 2021 Market Report, hailing a ‘spectacular year of online growth’ for the country’s industry.
The National Lottery operator Francaise des Jeux (FDJ) was particularly pivotal in helping the market to record a total gross gaming revenue (GGR) turnover of €10.7bn, an increase of 7% on the previous year (FY2020:€10bn). FDJ and Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU) accounted for 70% of GGR, registering combined revenues of €8.5bn.
The growth of the monopoly operators was attributed to the strong recovery of FDJ’s lottery retail network combined and improved online sales that registered a 16% increase in lottery GGR to €5bn.
This was achieved despite the closure of venues for the first half of year trading, which heavily impacted on France’s land-based casinos GGR as it declined by 41%, to €1bn.
ANJ also stated that, for the first time ever, the French online gambling vertical had surpassed active player accounts of five million as the market’s customer base grew to more than 5.4m customers during 2021.
Earlier this year, ANJ called upon all licensed operators to submit a yearly ‘Action Plan’ to encourage safer gambling controls, in a strategy labelled as a core priority.
Currently, the regulator is working with wider French government agencies to deliver a new advertising framework for French sports betting and online gambling, following publication of its guidelines and standards in February.
