Betting on Olympic events failed to shore up a flagging French online gaming market in the last quarter, as licensed operators’ total revenues from betting on sports, horse racing and poker in France fell 5% year-on-year to €158m.
In sports betting, stakes were up 14% to €156m in the three months to the end of September, as the London 2012 Olympics inspired 340,000 bettors to have a flutter, 13% up on the active player accounts recorded in the same period last year. Licensed operators’ gross gaming revenues were however down 2% year-on-year to €27m, which ARJEL put down to a subsequent change in the law which allowed operators to return a higher percentage of stakes to players - 84.6% compared to 81.7% last year. “Without the Olympics, operators would have lost 14% GGR in terms of Q3 2011,” commented ARJEL.
In horse race betting, dominated by monopoly incumbent PMU, turnover was up a marginal 2% to €260m, while active accounts fell 2.4% to 290,000, the first decline since the market opened, “possibly indicating that this sector has reached its maximum ‘target’ population in the current market conditions”, observed ARJEL. The increased rate of return to players again impacted revenues, which were down 6% to €61m.
Revenues from France’s largest online gambling sector, poker, were down 5% to €70m, due to the continued decline in cash poker (see separate article for more detail).
Young adult bettors also continued to abandon the regulated online betting and poker market in droves, the 18-24 year-old age group the only demographic to see its population decline in the last year, down 22% since Q3 2011 with nearly 58,000 less actives.
On the brighter side for operators grappling with prohibitive tax rates and restrictive liquidity in the regulated dot.fr market, the mobile channel continued to make progress, with 20% of poker players making use of mobile and tablets in the three months to the end of September, 19% of sports bettors and 15% of horse bettors, all up on the prior period.
Licensed operators’ spend on marketing was €49m, a figure that while down on the €53m spent around Euro 2012, is broadly stable with the amount spent by operators in Q4 2011 and Q1 2012, following the early land-grab which saw operators spend a quarterly average of €86m until the middle of 2011. 57% of licensed operators’ budgets were spent on bonuses and promotions, 14% on TV/radio/cinema/display advertising, 14% on the internet and 10% on sponsorships.
Article written by Stephen Carter
