Still, I wonder what the French could do about it if a Spanish, British or Dutch casino decided to stay open and unlicensed there in defiance of the national law. That's basically what Antigua's casinos did to the US, and they won their case at the WTO, which the EU claims to take seriously...
In August, the ARJEL (French authority for online gaming) started hunting "illegal gaming websites".
First target happened to be Stan James (who had been alerted end-june by the regulating authorities to stop accepting bets from French players.) Stan James done nothing.
So, Arjel attacked the French ISPs for allowing access to an illegal gaming website ... and Neustar , Stan James' website hosting provider.
Let's make this short : court ruled that the ISPs HAD to BLOCK access to stanjames.COM from people living in France. They done it - usually with seriously weak methods (like blocking the Stanjames.com with their DNS records)... making the StanJames website still available via their alternate .BE and .CH domains (as the court ruling only targeted the .COM website).
Stan James quickly dropped French market after this... and some groups followed.
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For those interested - here's a quick roundup about the French casino market :
Playtech - quickly blocked french play after french law got promulgated. They done it in the worst cclassy way - only warning players and casinos about the block eight hours before it would became effective. Ironically, Playtech's poker network is currently a massive failure - with only one licensee and only something like 50 players online during peak hours.
MGS : Blocked casino new french registrations some days ago. 32Red blocked french play yesterday - Palace Group did so some months ago already. A full block should came soon, as MGS-888 joint venture french poker network (yes, 888 AND MGS) is already running.
Bwin, Party : blocked play on their .com networks as soon they got their FR licence.
Bettson : Left french market not soon after Playtech - with a nice good-bye message
The French government has decided that the French people, in contradiction to the people from all other EU nations, cannot play on our sites, which is fully licensed from another EU country.
We kindly ask you to contact Customer Support on
support-en@casinoeuro.com if you have money on your account so we can help you withdraw this money to your account at your earliest.
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for your past custom and wish you all the best.
CasinoEuro Team
Leaving only RTG, Rival, Crypto (not sure for how long) and (maybe) Vegas Tech as options ... not good days, eh.