Gambling record broken in 2024, boosted by Euro football and the Olympics

Another record for gambling in France in 2024, which, thanks to the Euro football championship and the Paris Olympic Games, saw its turnover increase by nearly 5% to €14 billion, according to the French National Gaming Authority (ANJ) on Wednesday. Last year, gross gaming revenue (GGR)—the difference between players' stakes and the winnings paid out by operators—from online sports betting soared by 19% to nearly €1.8 billion.

Among the forty sports open to betting in France, four stand out for the stake amounts: football, tennis, basketball, and rugby, the ANJ highlights. Online horse racing betting is growing slightly (+1.5% to 339 million) while poker is declining (-2% to 493 million). In 2024, the number of active player accounts has increased (5.7 million player accounts) as has the number of unique players, which now stands at 3.9 million. The sports betting population has become younger (30% of sports bettors are between 18 and 24 years old) and it has also become more feminine (with 15% of female bettors), the regulator highlights.

While online gaming grew significantly last year, the bulk of the gambling activity came from FDJ, renamed FDJ United, which achieved a gross profit of more than €7 billion (+6%), mainly driven by the lottery. Next come the 202 French casinos with a gross profit up 1.2% to €2.7 billion for a stable number of entries (31 million). The gross profit of the 7 Parisian gaming clubs stood at €123 million. Finally, the PMU saw its gross profit fall by 2%, to €1.7 billion, but its net profit remained stable in 2024 (€837 million), which allows it to maintain its funding for the horse racing industry, and the number of players increased (3.5 million players).

For the ANJ, this dynamic means that it will be necessary to redouble vigilance in 2025 on risky players and commercial pressure from operators, even if the tax increase that will come into force on July 1st could affect the activity of the online market in 2025. "The first months of 2025 confirm this growth dynamic. In this context, the regulator highlights two major issues: the necessary reorientation of the sector's economic model towards less intensive gambling and less focused on risky players," underlines the president of this authority, Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin.

And "the mobilization of all stakeholders to change the representations associated with gambling, leading to its trivialization in French society," she continues in the press release. Another point of attention in 2025: the opening of the market for monetizable digital object games (JONUM), an experiment which should begin in September 2025 after publication of the decrees and in which the ANJ will be "particularly vigilant to ensure strict compliance with the borders with gambling."