DECISIVE DATE FOR FRENCH PARLIAMENTARIANS
9 October 2009
The week in which French online gambling's
future is defined
This is a key week for French gambling as the National
Assembly gathers between 7th and 9th October 2009 to
consider the draft law designed to liberalise the French
gambling market in 2010.
It comes seven months
after its notification to the European Commission, and
the European Gambling and Betting Association has
reminded interested parties that it still considers that
the French proposal conflicts with the EC Treaty.
“Several key restrictions in the draft do not serve
any general interest purpose, whether consumer or public
order protection” Sigrid Ligne, Secretary General of the
EGBA said this week.
Ligne went on to define the
areas which EGBA finds contentious:
* The opening
of the horserace betting market limited to pool betting
only: this restriction is based on the sole
justification that it is a “French tradition” and it
will force incumbents to align their offer with the one
offered by former French monopoly PMU. It will prevent
them from offering fixed odds bets on horse races to
French players, while this type of popular bet will be
permitted for all other sports.
* EU operators
forced to cap their payback ratio to players, allegedly
for the sake of limiting problem gaming: this will again
force new entrants to erase one of their most
competitive arguments. To date there is no evidence
whatsoever of this as confirmed by the European
Commission. The average ratio (percentage of stakes paid
back to players) is currently 75 percent for FDJ and 78
percent for PMU while online EU operators usually pay
back 95 percent to players.
* EU operators forced
to establish an IT platform in France in order to
provide data which could, in full transparency, be
provided cross-border from their existing IT platforms:
Such obligation would lead to duplications and create a
clear operational and financial disadvantage for
non-French operators.
* The introduction of a
“sports betting right” for event organisers creates a
worrying precedent in many ways. First, it grants sports
entities ownership of information currently in the
public domain (name and results of events or fixture
lists) and also used by other professions such as
journalists. Second, it will favour the most attractive
competitions and sports federations at the expense of
less visible sports. Third, most EU regulated operators
already enforce early detection systems (such as that of
ESSA) at their own cost which allows them to block
suspicious bets and alert in real time the relevant
sports authorities.
"These concerns also beg the
question as to whether the French model will be workable
and economically viable", Ligne adds. “Ring fencing the
French market goes against the cross-border nature of
the Internet and would lead to the emergence of an
underground and uncontrolled market where consumers
would be deprived from any protection."
Online Casino News Courtesy of
Infopowa
More news here.
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