FDJ boss: iCasino regulation is no panacea
Gaming giant is “neither for or against” legalisation, says CEO
Good morning, on Gaming & Co today:
Stéphane Pallez, CEO of FDJ, says illegal gambling will not be solved by regulating iCasino
Sweepstakes enemies gather at NCLGS, Evolution once again in the spotlight
Campaigner Matt Zarb-Cousin urges UK horse racing to distance itself from online casino vertical
CeJuego survey finds gambling in Spain is not excessive; News shorts: AFJEL initiative, Entain fined again, LeoVegas, Sweden-Macolin
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FDJ “neither for or against” iCasino regulation, says CEO
Boss of European gaming giant adds that it will not solve France’s illegal market and debt issues
In the middle of it all: Française des Jeux, the French and European lottery and online gaming giant, has told French media that “FDJ is neither for or against” the regulation of online casinos and that it “makes no sense to think that the French market should be legalised because (they) exist in many European countries”.
No magic wand: In an interview with Les Échos, Stéphane Pallez, CEO of FDJ, said the problem of the illegal gambling market in France would not be solved by legalising online casinos. “It is not borne out by examples from other countries,” she said.
She added that “the argument that it would bring in a lot of extra revenue for public finances is inaccurate and, moreover, is not sufficient to justify any legalisation”.
However, she did not provide a potential solution for how the estimated 3-4 million French players currently playing on unlicensed casino sites could be brought back into the legal sphere.
No easy comps: “Not everything is comparable from one country to another”, and as “online casinos involve more risks in terms of addiction”, FDJ’s “position on online casinos is pragmatic; we are open to debate but remain cautious”, Pallez noted.
Good on all fronts: However, she admitted that the acquisition of Kindred Group, with its online casino activities across many European countries, puts FDJ in a good position whether online casinos are regulated or not in France.
France is desperate for revenues and the country's gambling operators could be subject to tax hikes when the 2025 Budget is put forward early next year. Pallez warned that “France already has some of the highest taxes on gambling, if not the highest”.
“As for FDJ, we are already the biggest taxpayer in the sector, having paid €4.5bn to the State this year. We have to be careful not to break this momentum by destabilising a system that works,” she added.
Further reading: Peeling FDJ’s layers
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The great Stateside sweepstakes debate intensifies
Sweepstakes operators fight back as class action is dismissed but opponents line up to demand legislative action
Sweeps in the crosshairs: While opponents lined up to take aim at sweepstakes operators at the winter meeting of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States (NCLGS) in New Orleans last weekend, the industry enjoyed a rare victory as a federal judge in Georgia dismissed a class action against leading operator VGW.
The judge said that because there are no goods or services being delivered to the state of Georgia, VGW sites like Chumba and LuckyLand are passive websites and not in the court’s jurisdiction.
The good news in Georgia slightly offset recent cease and desist notices from Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan, Idaho, Washington and exit from Nevada. The company is also being sued in California for a second time for a "breathtaking display of chutzpah and lawlessness".
Best behaviour: The court case coincided with the sweepstakes trade body, the Social & Promotional Gaming Association (SPGA), releasing a new Code of Conduct to counter accusations of underage gambling and a lack of consumer care.
The Code includes provisions to ensure: 18+ age verification for real money players, robust identity verification or KYC, geolocation verification of customers and strict AML policies.
No risk attack: According to one industry contact who was the NCLGS event, Howard Glaser, Head of Government Affairs at Light & Wonder, told lawmakers that going after sweepstakes operators was a “no risk” gambit that would be supported by “every type of legal gambling that you have in your state”.
Also under attack: Before sitting down to listen to NCLGS speakers, delegates were handed a spiral-bound copy of an in-depth article that claims to outline live casino market leader Evolution’s activities in illegal markets.
The article highlighted the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s stake in Evolution – which the authors found hypocritical given Norway’s government monopoly – and the supplier’s business practices and exposure to Asia, which accounts for 39% of group revenue.
While nobody took responsibility for the hand-out, Glaser was later seen distributing a Washington Post article about the legality of sweepstakes operators, which had the same binding.
Horse racing could avoid affordability checks if it splits from iCasino
Go your own way: Gambling reform campaigner Matt Zarb-Cousin has called for UK horse racing stakeholders to dissociate themselves from their online casino counterparts and that affordability checks should be limited to online slots and other digital casino products.
Speaking on The Barstewards Enquiry podcast last week, Zarb-Cousin advocated for separate licences and platforms between the two verticals and called for racing wallets to be separated from those used to gamble on online casino products.
Different risk profile: “If racing was able to delineate from the current online casino operations, if there was a separate wallet, we wouldn't be having a situation where racing could be subject to affordability checks, it would be a completely different risk profile in terms of the products,” said Zarb-Cousin.
He added that racing has been caught up in conversations around these regulations and in “the current business model, which is to grow online casino products, (that) is not what racing should be about”.
Zarb-Cousin said “product risk is a very real variable” and much of the argument around “problem gambling is about the person, not the product. But gambling products have “different levels of harm associated with them and therefore require different levels of regulation”.
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Spain has a “balanced relationship with gambling”, says trade body…
… as lifting of ad ban gives operators a revenue bump
May come as a surprise: The latest player survey from Spain’s Gaming Business Council (CeJuego) showed that the majority of Spaniards of all ages interact with gambling products. Alejandro Landaluce, CEO of CeJuego, said the study is “in line with data from the Ministry of Health and with previous editions of these reports and reveals a simple reality: Spaniards have a balanced relationship with gambling, although this may surprise some”.
According to the data, 85.5% of Spaniards aged 18-75, or 29.6m people, participated in some form of gambling in 2023, a YoY rise of 2%. Cejuego added that the number of people affected by problem gambling was down to 0.2% of the population.
It said the figure placed Spain among the Western European countries with the lowest problem gambling rates, “comparable to countries such as Holland and Portugal (both at 0.2%) and below Germany and France (0.5%)”.
Spanish online operators’ GGR was up 14.4% YoY during Q3 at €348m and up 0.5% on Q2, as operators benefited from the Supreme Court’s decision in April to lift some marketing restrictions.
News shorts
France’s online gaming trade body AFJEL is set to take part in the 17Cyber project to combat illegal online gambling and cyber-criminality in partnership with the country’s Ministry of the Interior and National Police force. Digital scams and fraud have increased 8% per year since 2016, while illegal gambling sites have expanded significantly despite efforts to block and delist them, said AFJEL.
Entain is set for another heavy fine, this time in Australia. The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre said the UK group “did not develop and maintain a compliant anti-money laundering program and failed to identify and assess the risks it faced”.
Allegations include claims that Entain’s board and senior management did not have appropriate oversight of its AML programme or appropriate controls to identify customers and deliberately obscured the identity of some high-risk customers.
Not again: Entain is still paying the instalments of the £615m penalty agreed with the UK government last year over its operations in Turkey.
MGM Resorts’ LeoVegas has joined the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA). The Swedish company has recently launched operations for BetMGM in the UK, Netherlands and Sweden.
Sweden has joined the Council of Europe’s Macolin Convention to counter match-fixing and boost sporting integrity.
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