French market buoyed by record sports betting increase in 2018

Sports betting continued its dominance of French gambling market revenues, increasing by 46% year-on-year during 2018, according to the latest figures released by the regulator.

ARJEL revealed sports betting gross gaming revenues of €691m during 2018, up from the €472m reported during 2017.

This higher revenue was largely due to a 56% increase in bets being placed, the highest annual increase since the launch of the regulated French market in 2010. The estimated number of players rocketed to just under 2.2 million during the year, a rise of 61% y-o-y.

Over 10% of all the bets placed in 2018 (€382m) were placed on the FIFA World Cup alone.

Revenues from online poker increased by 5% year-on-year to €258m during 2018, the second year of increases in a row, partially due to an 8% increase in the number of unique players, which rose to 1.1 million in 2018.

In addition to this there was a significant growth in stakes in all forms of online poker, with tournament game stakes increasing by 11% in 2018 and cash game stakes rising 15% on 2017’s figures.

Following the opening of the shared liquidity agreement between France, Spain and Portugal at the start of 2018, the number of active player accounts grew to 249,000 per week.

Betting on horseracing also reported its second year of growth, with gross gaming revenues up 5% to €256m in 2018. The total amount of bets placed on horseracing grew to €1,049m during the year, the highest total recorded by the regulator in the last five years.