Gambling Law in France

❖ Licensing

❖ Legislation in France

For a country with such a rich gambling tradition, it’s remarkable that the French authorities have prohibited certain forms of gambling over the years. Some of the oldest gambling establishments in the world can be found in France, and the nation’s contribution to the development of some of today’s most popular games can’t be overstated.



Gambling in France is considered legal only when Justice Ministry specifically sanctions it. Le Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU) and its affiliate Le Pari Mutuel Hippodrome (PMH) have power over all French sports betting. Around 20% betting takes place on-course and the other 80% off-course in PMU licensed café kiosks and bars. There are 160 state licensed casinos in France. Sous Direction des Courses et des Jeux is a special police force, which keeps a check on all sorts of gambling activities in France from illegal betting to casino licenses, doping, race fixing and selling information.



There are close to 500 casinos, horse racing tracks and "racinos" (a combined racetrack and casino) dotted around the country. The size and age of the brick-and-mortar casino industry in France might go some way towards explaining the French authorities’ 파워볼게임 reluctance to fully embrace the online world. However, some of France's best-established poker rooms have shut down in recent years, which raises questions about the viability of such a great number of physical casinos in the digital era.

Licensing / Legislation in France

Licensing is extremely valuable in France because of the high level of priority that they put on making sure that the sites that become licensed are legitimate. One thing about licensing that used to put licensed sites at a disadvantage is that player pools weren’t allowed to be shared with foreign sites. This hurt poker sites in particular because a larger player pool was necessary to keep a healthy ecosystem of players. Combined with the fact that offshore unlicensed operators were roaming freely, offering their services to the player base without any tax or fee charges to the state, ht onshore platforms were definitely disadvantaged.



The licenses are granted by the relevant and competent regulatory authorities for a period of five years. There is also an option for extending the licenses for the same period of half a decade after their expiration.



A new legislative bill related to online gambling operations was introduced by the French Government in 2009. Then, a year later, it officially legalized a total of three forms of online gambling activities – poker, sports betting, including fixed odds betting, pool betting and live betting, and horse races betting.