The French regulated online market hasn’t long been in existence but it’s not stopped attacks coming more often than the country’s Air Traffic Controllers go on strike. Criticism hasn’t even been limited to those outside the country who until recently weren’t let in. It’s little surprise that one of the largest operators in the new market has come out to criticize the regulations, and they’re as French as a platter of Pain au Chocolat.
In today’s French daily paper, Le Figaro, chairman of directors and 50% shareholder at BetClic Everest Group, Stéphane Courbit, has roundly criticized the new stringent market in which they operate.
“The president and the government have been brave in deciding to open this market. But French law is absurd in its execution. This is the worst in Europe. It does not allow us to exist: we are overtaxed, the scope of authorized gambling is too limited and the rate of return to players is too low,” Courbit said.
He continued: “The problem is the cap rate of return to players imposed by French law. Today, we cannot distribute more than 85% of money [to players]. Everywhere in Europe, but also in France if you did not license, you redistribute 96%. We did not imagine how disappointing this would be for French players, who know that on other non-licensed sites distribution rates are much higher.”
Courbit even went on to say that the French market encourages fraud. He compared it to the fraud prevention success coming out of China, and the fact that ARJEL simply doesn’t have enough staff working to prevent illegal sites totally.
It might be appropriate for us to chime in here and mention the fact that we did tell you guys that the public companies would struggle in the newly regulated market, and that a private model would be the better one in such a prohibitive environment. Seems what we wrote back in July is finally coming to fruition.
With even their own compatriots bemoaning the regulations, maybe it would be an idea to rethink them slightly. As for BetClic Everest, why didn’t they choose to combine the two to form BetCleverest? They were just the slightest bit too dumb to think of it.
