No online casino in France in 2023
No iCasino regulation, ANJ-Olympics match-fixing fight, double Dutch launch & Co
Hello, on Gaming & Co today:
No online casino via JONUM: France says non to iCasino regulation this year.
ANJ is readying its anti-match fixing set up for the 2024 Olympics.
LeoVegas and Kambi to launch in the Netherlands.
News in brief: FDJ-ZEturf, OpenBet-Zaska, Netflix-Light&Wonder
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No online casino - JONUM still under pressure
The strong disagreements that dominated the special committee debates on JONUM continued during the public sessions, but there will be no online casino regulation in France this year.
No iCasino via JONUM: The bill on games with monetisable digital objects (JONUM) will not be the legislative vehicle through which the French gambling industry will be able to regulate online casinos.
The news is not a major surprise, but was confirmed by Renaissance MP Denis Masséglia at he opened the public debates on JONUM last week.
The MP from the Maine et Loire said : "Some people want to use this legislative vehicle to legalise online casinos; others are deeply concerned. I repeat firmly: there is no question of authorising this illegal form of gambling. Online casinos are banned and must remain so."
First on JONUM: Masséglia welcomed the fact that "France will be the first country in the world to introduce regulation for this ecosystem", but a collective opinion piece written by the French trade bodies for the online operators, land-based casinos and Française des jeux noted that JONUMs will be supervised by the gambling regulator ANJ.
For the trade groups, "the most obvious solution" would be to "integrate them (JONUM) into the existing gambling framework", rather than establishing a "JONUM status built on exceptions".
One of these exceptions is the payment of players’ winnings in cryptocurrencies, which "is prohibited under the (current) regulatory framework", the article noted.
Entry checks
The government did react in favour of MPs' complaints about age verification when opening JONUM accounts.
It stated that "the (age) check will no longer take place on exit, but when the player enters the site in question".
No holds barred: Nonetheless, the theme and treatment given of JONUMs continued to provoke strong criticism and the MPs who are opposed to them did not hold back when they spoke.
Aurélien Taché (Ecolo-NUPES) said: "The people we have been able to consult, in particular the ANJ (Autorité Nationale des Jeux), have all told us that these are online casinos in disguise. But what you are proposing at this stage is a framework that is more flexible and undermining than the one that applies to gambling."
Sophia Chikirou (LFI-NUPES) carried on from last week and stated that according to ANJ, "the rate of practices deemed problematic is 20%" with JONUM, "twice as high as for traditional gambling" and "rises to 27% for Sorare-type games".
Taboo subject: "Sorare is the unspoken, the great taboo of this bill, in truth designed exclusively for this declining French unicorn," she added.
"Let's be clear: Sorare offers services that straddle the border between real money gambling and sports betting. They should be assimilated into the former. Instead, we are creating an exceptional regime for the benefit of a single company."
Meanwhile the government said it wanted to create "a responsible framework that would benefit not only start-ups" but also PMU, which, through its NFT-Web3 brand Stables, is "seeking to guarantee the long-term future of its employees".
Fantasy sports or gambling?
The debate is also raging in the US: The question ‘are fantasy sports real money gambling?’ is also highly topical on the other side of the Atlantic.
Indeed, leading sportsbooks FanDuel and DraftKings are taking a dim view of the emergence of new fantasy operators such as Underdog Fantasy and Prize Picks. Industry observers say the OSB leaders have lobbied state regulators to block fantasy sports betting sites.
Florida, Michigan and New York are among the states that have ordered Underdog Fantasy and Prize Picks to stop their operations.
Further reading: Underdog Fantasy CEO Jeremy Levine was interviewed by SBC Americas. The debate continued on X/Twitter.
Paris Olympics: ANJ against match-fixing
The French regulator ANJ will use of the national platform for fighting match-fixing launched in 2016 during the 2024 Olympic Games and will take part in awareness-raising initiatives among volunteers.
Preventing match-focinsg and fraudluent bets will come under the responsibility of the French Ministry for sports while betting monitoring will be the responsibility of ANJ.
According to the Autorité, €75m have been staked on Rugby World Cup matches and "no suspicion of manipulation has been noted" since the competition began on 8 September.
ANJ added that the national enforcement platform had processed 76 suspicious betting notices since the start of the year, compared with 143 in 2022.
Double launch in the Netherlands
LeoVegas continues to roll out the international strategy of its parent company MGM Resorts International with the launch of leovegas.nl in the Netherlands.
LeoVegas was one of the leading operators in Holland prior to market regulation in October 2021 and the launch is part of MGM's strategy to expand its international reach.
The group recently launched its BetMGM brand in the UK, as well as Expekt.dk in Denmark, Leo Vegas acquired the brand's assets from Betclic in 2021 for €5m, and LeoVegas.de in Germany in 2023.
As for sports betting solution propvider Kambi, it has announced that it will be supplying its sports betting solution to operator 711.nl, which has been operating an online casino on the market since 2022 and has applied for an online bookmaker licence from the regulator Kansspelautoriteit.
GIG to launch Goldenpark in Ontario
Golden Ontario: Gaming Innovation Group is to launch Spanish group Goldenpark's online betting and gaming site in the Canadian province of Ontario.
Goldenpark recently launched its offering in Portugal and is a long-standing customer of Sportnco, the French group that GIG will acquire in 2021.
The group joins five other GIG customers active in Ontario. At the end of July the province had generated just over $26bn in bets and $1bn in PBJ since its regulation in April 2022.
News in brief
Française des Jeux has completed its acquisition of ZEturf for €175m following the takeover agreement reached between the two parties in November 2022.
FDJ said ZEturf recorded €50m in revenues in 2022 and that the operation “enables it to become the fourth largest player in online gambling in France with a market share of more than 10%".
OpenBet will provide its compliance services to the Czech national lottery Sazka via its subsidiary Neccton. OpenBet acquired Neccton in June and has been supplying its sports betting solution to Sazka since July 2022, when it took over the contract previously operated by SBTech (before it was taken over by DraftKings).
Netflix has signed a licensing agreement with slot machine manufacturer Light and Wonder (formerly Scientific Games) based on Squid Game, the streaming platform's most popular series. LNW will be showcasing the machines at the G2E trade show in Las Vegas this week.
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