As some of you might know, online gambling (including sports betting) is now regulated since a few weeks in France. The Regulation Agency is on
http://www.arjel.fr/.
So if you are leaving in France, or leaving elsewhere and simply visiting France (then : keep your foreign postal adress and use an abroad IP@ and it should work...), you will have trouble betting on your favorite booky !
As a consequence only in-France-licenced rooms are allowed to accept players located in France.
Getting such a licence requires to respect a set of quite complicated rules, including amongst other :
- paying some fixed fee;
- paying 7.5% of all sports bets as a tax;
- having a dedicated
www.bookname.fr site;
- re-routing all traffic from France from the
www.bookname.com site to the
www.bookname.fr site
- refusing to open (and even closing) any account to French located players, on the
www.bookname.com site, and on any similar site from any parent-compagny;
- not paying more than 85% back to players on average (it was about 80% for soccer WC);
- getting some 'contract' with event organisers (for events in France, or organised by some french entity) before offering bets on their events (and paying the organisers, who should use this money to fight against fraud).
Players located in France were "kicked out" (account closed, money back) from many non licensed bookies (which could get large fines if they still accept players located in France), especially those having any subsidiary in European Union (a long list, unfortunately).
The French regulator has started to put on court some bookies which do not respect this law (interwetten and CentreBet which closed their French players accounts, and Stryyke Entertainment, Betfred and Stanjames which did not close them up to now) and threatened a number of others (Globet, Jaxx,Betfred, 888sport, 10Bet, 32red, Betsson, Bet24, Betcris, Boylesports, PaddyPower, Jetbull,....).
Bookies could have to pay up to 100 000€/day according to the law.
Affiliates advertising for non-licenced bookies could also have big fines to pay.
One book (unibet) even "solds" 25 000 of its French located players to another (newly born, likely also unibet-owned) booky, but ... got no licence up to now (as a consequence ?).
Nothing seems to have happened (up to now) with asian bookies or 5d or pinny.
Licenced bookies are listed on
http://www.arjel.fr/-Liste-des-operateurs-agrees-.html (this liste also includes licenced poker rooms). Anyway, they all have awfull odds.
The 85% return limitation is supposed to avoid betting addiction ... but there are still many "pure luck" games (eg instant scratch games) sold by the monopolistic (state owned) operator which induce much more addiction issues (according to doctors), and who are btw only offering about 50% return !
My analysis is that is actually more for a) collecting more money as taxes; b) enabling bookies to still make good profit with limited competition; c) taking the money from idiots.