Messy is the the situation in which the online gambling industry find itself after the French gaming regulation was put in place a few weeks ago. I’ve got people calling me every day for the past 6 weeks, with questions. Affiliates, media agencies, casino operators and gaming software providers… The most popular questions are:
- French is your strong market, are you gonna pull out?
- How is it going to affect the industry?
- Who’s pulling out?
- Who’s staying?
- Do you keep buying players on CPA model?

First of all, the regulation addresses only sport betting, horse racing and poker. So online casino operators with European gaming license can continue operating in France and other markets (where online casino isn’t regulated) freely. Obviously we can entertain ourself in an academic conversation about the interpretation of the law, but we’d rather leave that to our client’s lawyers who advised to stay in the French market.

Regarding other operators, I’ve been informed over the past 2 months of various gaming companies running on Playtech’s software that they were pulling out of the market and apparently the the instruction is coming from the software provider and isn’t up to the operator to decide whether to stay or not. Some operators did shut down their brands a few weeks ago, some are still accepting French players and I agree with you it’s a little messy and create some sort of uncertainty if you drive traffic on a revshare basis.

1/ We keep buying players on CPA as well as Revshare
2/ Our client stays in France
3/ Our client will apply for a French license when the government will issue such casino games license
4/ If you’re not sure about other operators, I strongly recommend you to openly ask them what their position is.

I hope my note did clarify the situation.

Laurent