Open licensing, split by function
Alderney
A Channel Island jurisdiction whose licence separates the customer relationship from the platform operation.
Licensed online casino
France
The largest European economy with no legal online casino: only betting, horse racing and poker can be licensed.
| Product | Position | What that means |
|---|---|---|
| Online casino | Prohibited | The product cannot lawfully be offered to local customers by anyone. |
| Sports betting | Licensed | Commercial operators can be licensed to offer this product to local customers. |
| Online poker | Licensed | Commercial operators can be licensed to offer this product to local customers. |
| Lottery | State monopoly | Reserved to a state or state-controlled operator; no commercial licence is available. |
How the market works
France opened online gambling to competition in 2010, but only for sports betting, horse race betting and poker. Online casino games, including slots and roulette, cannot be licensed and cannot lawfully be offered to French customers by anyone. Proposals to licence them have been raised, most recently in budget discussions, and have not been carried through, with opposition from the land-based casino sector a significant factor.
Horse race betting has a weight in France that it has almost nowhere else, and the pari-mutuel structure, in which stakes are pooled and the operator takes a commission rather than a position, remains central to the market rather than a legacy product.
Supervision is forward-looking in method: licensed operators submit annual responsible gambling and anti-money-laundering action plans for approval. The regulator also has powers over the advertising practices of licensees and over the strategy of the state-controlled lottery and betting operator.
Who regulates it
Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ), based in Paris and operating under Act of 12 May 2010, as amended. The French regulator, which licenses online betting and poker but not online casino games.
Licence types issued
- Online sports betting
- Online horse race betting
- Online poker
Questions about France
Other markets in Europe
Online licence tied to a land-based licence
Belgium
Online licences exist only as supplements to land-based licences, and advertising is prohibited.
Tied to land-based online casino
Open licensing per game type
Czechia
A licensed market with a mandatory central exclusion register that covers more than self-exclusion.
Licensed online casino
Open licensing
Denmark
An early licensing regime whose certification programme and exclusion register were widely copied.
Licensed online casino
Monopoly, with licensing legislated for 2027
Finland
One of Europe's last gambling monopolies, legislated to open to licensed competition from 2027.
State monopoly online casino
Open licensing, with online table games excluded
Germany
Europe's largest economy licenses online slots and poker but not online table games, and taxes stakes rather than revenue.
Partly restricted online casino
Background reading
Legal and compliance
What a gaming licence actually covers
A licence is not a badge of quality and it is not valid everywhere. What it authorises, who it binds, and why one company often holds a dozen.
Legal and compliance
How gambling is taxed, and why the base matters
A tax on stakes and a tax on gross gaming revenue can carry the same headline number and produce completely different businesses.
Legal and compliance
How a company enters a new market
The sequence from legal assessment to launch, and the parts that routinely take longer than anyone plans for.
Legal and compliance
What grey and black markets actually mean
The industry uses three words for the legal status of a market and rarely defines them. Here is what each one means in practice.