French Regulator ANJ Warns About Illegal Gambling Sites

L’Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), a gambling regulator from France, useful difficult to forestall forbidden gambling successful nan country. The regulator precocious warned each players astir nan fraud that is occurring successful nan industry: various forbidden gambling operators usage nan brands of celebrated licensed operators to advertise their services connected societal media platforms, particularly Facebook.

Risks for players

That way, moreover those looking to bet legally tin beryllium tricked into placing forbidden bets. Now, nan regulator has joined forces pinch Meta to show and resoluteness nan issue.

So far, ANJ has recovered about 400 forbidden websites, which resulted successful 137 personification accounts connected Facebook being blocked. The main operators that were utilized for forbidden operations were Barrière and JOA groups. The profiles of these operators person been created and their marque image was utilized to pull imaginable customers to nan forbidden website. They besides created mobile apps that players were led to from Facebook images.

Online casinos aren’t legalized successful France. However, immoderate operators are allowed to connection online sports betting and equine racing betting services to French players. Also, land-based casinos that person due licenses are besides legal.

According to ANJ, players are at immense risk owed to betting connected forbidden sites. They consequence not being paid erstwhile they win, arsenic good arsenic various costs frauds and nan consequence of stealing individual data.

The regulator commented: “If successful uncertainty astir nan legality of nan gambling tract connected which you are astir to bet, consult nan database of sites approved by nan ANJ. You tin besides consult nan blacklist of sites that person been administratively blocked by nan ANJ. We induce anyone who notices nan beingness of clone advertisements to study them.”

Worth of forbidden betting market

In December 2023, ANJ said that nan forbidden betting marketplace successful France was worthy up to €1.50 billion (£1.28bn/$1.62bn), which is more than 10% higher than nan wagered magnitude successful nan state connected a yearly basis.

According to investigation conducted by ANJ, 510 forbidden websites are active. About 60% of each postulation comes from 21 of them.

PwC published a study pinch concerning data: nan gross gaming gross illegal casinos earned is location between €748m and €1.5bn, which is betwixt 5% and 10% of full gambling successful France. The grounds was group successful 2022 erstwhile it was €12.9 billion.

Source:

“French regulator issues informing complete forbidden online casinos connected Facebook”, igamingbusiness.com, January 31, 2023.