France Online Poker Market Declines Yet Again

It continues to be a sad state of affairs in the French online gaming and poker market after revenue figures for the year’s third quarter were released last week. Out of all the online gaming mediums available in the country, poker fared the worst, having fallen by 5% year-on-year.

Online poker tournament figures for the quarter initially gave some hope that France’s online poker woes were over, with year-on-year revenue having increased by 21%. However, the increase was offset by a 20% decrease in total revenues for online poker cash games, which resulted in the total decrease.

The decrease continues the downward trend of online poker in France throughout 2015, something that shows no sign of ending anytime soon. That comes in spite of the initiatives of many French-based online operators, especially Winamax, to bring online players back to their networks.

Winamax signed major sponsorship deals with a number of top level French football clubs in the past few months, something they hoped would boost brand awareness and interest among potential online poker players. The network also recently signed top European poker player Alexandre Luneau to their pro roster, where he joined players like Davidi Kitai and Sylvain Loosli.

For Winamax, the moves appear to making their situation less worse than it perhaps could be. According to PokerScout, their seven day player average currently stands at 1150, which is the equal sixth highest average of all online poker networks. Other major networks, like PokerStars.fr, PartyPoker.fr and iPoker.fr, continue to struggle, with fewer than 1700 players between them on a seven day average basis.

With France’s high tax rates – 33% company tax and an extra 2% for online poker cash games – it is not difficult to see why the country’s online poker market continues to struggle. Competition continues to be lost to ‘offshore’ poker operators, most if not all of which do not face the same high tax rates as French-based networks.

Online gaming as a whole decreased by 3% in France during the third quarter of 2015. Sports betting was the online gaming medium that saw the largest revenue increase, having jumped by 3% between July and September.