Key Points
- The only bit of gaming that moved in the right direction was online, with GGR spiking 11% to €1.45bn the only growth in the market, which otherwise crawled along at an anemic 0.5% to €5.66bn.
- Sports betting stakes were flat until the World Cup kicked off, then suddenly shot up 47% in June, a small footing 4% increase from January to May.
- FDJ United and PMU, the two monopolies that should’ve been propping up the market, instead slumped by 2% and 5.8% respectively which now means a record 5.85 million online accounts face the impending music, as the saying goes.
France’s regulated gaming industry hasn’t done a whole lot in the first six months of 2026, and the truth lies in two places and they’re as obvious as day and night. Taking in all the numbers from the market review, the regulator’s first half-year report, we see that the GGR that’s gross gaming revenue for the uninitiated came to a paltry €5.66bn by the end of June. Just 0.5% higher than the year before. As for last year, the market was up 4.1%. Not that that’s anything to write home about either. The figures are courtesy of the ANJ regulator’s half-year report (Autorité nationale des jeux for you non-speakers of French), which they dropped on 15 October. One year prior, the market growth was a healthy 4.1%. So we’re talking about a pretty sharp decline. Total GGR does leave out the land-based casinos and gaming clubs, which apparently only report their figures once a year. Fair enough.
Online, Alone, Kept the Market Afloat
Online gaming was the only bit that managed to muster up some growth, adding 2.5% to the overall result. FDU, on the other hand, pretty much cancelled that out, taking away 1.2 points, while PMU, the other monopoly in town, went down another 0.8 points. All in all, Online GGR ended up being up 11% to €1.45bn which is no small feat, bumping their share of the regulated market to an impressive 25.6%. Sports betting made the bulk of those gains, churning out an 11.6% rise in GGR to a whopping €995m on stakes of €6.6bn.
And then there’s the timing of all this. It seems sports betting was pretty much no where to be seen, until the World Cup came along, and then suddenly it was like money was pouring in. Between Jan and May stakes only rose by 4%, but in June stakes suddenly shot up 47%. Football stakes all by itself jumped 116% in that month (June), and the number of people biting the promotional bait rose to a whopping 3.1million. Tennis on the other hand took a nosedive with a 13.5% drop.
Bonuses Set a New Benchmark, Outstripping Revenue Easily
To get those extra customers coming to the table in June, operators opened their wallets, and bonus figures will show just how hard they were trying. In June they coughed up €9.0m in bonuses, which is three times the €2.4m they were paying in bonuses a year ago. Across all online products, player rewards were up a whopping 28% to €199m which is about 2.5 times faster than GGR. In fact, rewards now equal a hefty 13.8% of online GGR as opposed to the 11.9% it was in the first half of 2025.
There’s no shock here, considering the regulator had this all coming in January. They got their hands on the operators’ 2026 promo plans which came in at €785m, a 25% increase from the year prior. ANJ approved things, but then came the warning to stay inside declared budgets and for goodness sake avoid transferring too many marketing dollars.
Base for Record Player Number, With Questions Included
A record high of 5.85 million online active accounts increased by 24% compared to the previous year’s period. Unique player number increased at a slower pace – by 17% to 4.06 million. Thus, there is an increase in the number of accounts per player to 1.44 from 1.37 in the previous year. The stakes per active account decreased by 14%, and the average bet dropped from €14.60 to €14.00.
The full World Cup cycle was more profitable than it could be seen in the six-month statistics. According to the regulator’s report, stakes of French online gambling operators exceeded €1.3bn in contrast to €597m in 2022. During this event, more than one million new accounts were created, and operator GGR increased to €157m from €70m. Since the final match happened on 19th July, part of this profit will be shown in the second half-year statistics. In the regulator’s commentaries, which were translated from the French language, it was stated that only 25% of players did not have any losses throughout the tournament.
Poker Quietly Outstripped Others
The poker GGR increased by 13.4% to €290m. Among these €202m, or 70% of all poker revenue, is associated with Sit & Go tournaments. The number of active poker accounts increased by 38.5% to 2.3 million. However, GGR per account decreased by 18% to €126. Horse racing has different results – its stakes increased by 15.8% to €920m without any spike in June. Its GGR increased by only 2.8% to €164m.
Jackpots, Heatwaves and Racing Fatigue Threaten Monopolies
FDJ United continues to be the dominant player in this market, generating 61% of the GGR monitored by the ANJ. Its French lottery and retail betting division reported a GGR decline of 2.0% to €3,429m. The draw games declined by 7.6%, due to fewer jackpots and heatwave-induced visits to shops.
First mentioned in the group’s half-yearly performance report was the issue of taxes. “Its performance continues to be impacted by the tax burden, in addition to the specific features of our business model,” said the chairwoman and CEO of the group Stéphane Pallez. Group-wide FDJ United reported a loss of €16m amid €135m of impairment of its online operations.
In comparison, the performance of PMU looks even more disappointing, having been in decline for three first halves in a row. It saw stakes drop by 3.8% to €3.1bn and GGR by 5.8% to €782m. ANJ attributed that discrepancy to October 2025, when PMU increased the Simple bet payouts at retail to 84.6%. Its market share now stands at 13.8%, with the lead of online sports betting at 3.8 points. Under their leadership, PMU with Cyrille Giraudat as the CEO and Éric Woerth as the chair prepares the Pacte PMU 2030. Racing in France will be under pressure, as the budget of the sector from PMU in 2026 falls to €725m from €802m.
The Casino Question Paris Continues to Dodge
Online casinos remain outlawed in France, and that is how this report starts. In October 2024, the government said that apart from France and Cyprus, no other EU states prohibit them. However, in the same month, the government gave up the attempt to legalise online casinos in the face of heavy opposition from land-based casinos. In July, the Interior Ministry of France stated that legalisation could damage land-based casinos and provide little net gain in taxes.
Nevertheless, keeping them banned comes with a cost, and the regulator has been trying to quantify it. According to the study carried out by PwC for the ANJ, the GGR of illegal online gambling ranged from €748m to €1.5bn, based on the 2023 study. This estimate corresponded to 5-11% of the entire gambling market in France. According to EGBA, the contribution of casino and slot websites was up to 50% of traffic.
Analysis: France Paid Heavily for June, and Autumn Will Reveal the Price It Paid
The 0.5% increase does not favourably portray an online betting market relying on a single tournament and massive bonuses. While the data does not provide information regarding January to May GGR, stakes increased only by 4% during those five relatively inactive months. The main concern here, however, is costs, since the number of rewards grew 2.5 times faster than the revenues supporting them. Simply put, operators spent more on each euro of growth than ever before.
In addition, we warn against interpreting 5.85 million accounts as 5.85 million new customers. The number of accounts increased faster than that of the players, thus, some portion of the increase can be attributed to splitting bets between operators. It is also unknown whether World Cup recruits will continue placing bets, and according to the ANJ, the second half will provide the answer. Moreover, the ANJ’s research of niche betting markets provides an additional layer to this question. While excessive bettors made over 80% of stakes on Brazilian, Saudi, Japanese and Australian leagues – that is, leagues outside the World Cup football – casual bettors concentrate on major tournaments, thus, the crucial question is which group will stay after July.
The year-on-year results are, of course, highly dependent on FDJ United, which the ANJ states explicitly. Being the company owning 61% of measured GGR, FDJ United focuses solely on stable GGR from the French network. Thus, its third-quarter update, scheduled for 21 October, will bring the first signals for the second half.
Here comes the point that is bound to be contested by many: we consider that the casino ban currently serves more as a protection for the incumbents than for players. For example, poker’s Sit & Go boom demonstrates that French players want a rapid, casino-like experience unavailable through licensed websites. If the illegal market continues operating at the previous level, parliamentarians’ prudence brings them an actual price, unknown even to them.
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