France announces new player protection regulations

Added: January 7, 2021

The French government has announced the introduction of many new player protection rules in an attempt to obtain a safer gambling environment.

The new plans have been handed over to the European Commission and will require all operators to provide plans of action regarding safe gambling and measures such as deposit limits. The plan of action by the operators should be given to L’Autorité nationale des Jeux (ANJ), the new gambling regulator which was launched on the 22nd of June 2020. ANJ supervises all gambling activity in France whether it be online gambling or lottery games.

ANJ will be the one to decide whether the plans published are suitable or not and will also help those whose plans do not make the cut by providing them with recommendations and ways to fix their plans.

Back in mid-December, ANJ had signed a deal with Unaf to stop excessive betting and underage gambling and these new plans will surely help out the purpose of this partnership. Moreover, France’s lottery giant La Française des Jeux and horse racing operator – Pari Mutuel Urbain are required to hand over their plans by 30 September 2021. Online operators will have to to submit their action plans on 30 November. Additionally, a different plan of action has to be submitted by the 31st October showing the operators promotional strategies.

While they review the operators’ plans, ANJ have the authority to extract any commercial strategies if it “directly or indirectly incites minors or persons banned from gambling to gamble or involves an excessive incentive to gamble”. These new measures will also call for operators to “limit the risk potential of addiction” and must “assess the addiction potential of the gambling offer and its attractiveness to minors, before and after providing it”.

In order to make such assessments, it is suggested that operators use ASTERIG (Assessment Tool to Measure and Evaluate the Risk Potential of Gambling Products). It will give operators the chance to go over and review their platform and structural features of their games.

The French regulatory body, ANJ, has been repeatedly fighting against addiction and problem gambling, imposing many new measures concerning the safety of their players, including:

Operators are supposed to offer game moderators. These moderators allow the player to:

limit bets.
limit the supply of their account.
limit playing time.Operators are also required to:
allow self-exclusion from the game.
Consistently verify the age of their customers at every account opening and every visit to the operator’s website.
Make sure that the identity of the player is the same as the holder of the payment account.
Permanently mention the ban on gambling for minors on their website.

The Law on Online Gambling also sets a limit on the rate of return to players that operators are forced to abide by surrounding horse and sports betting. This rate of return paid out to players also includes bonuses.

AffPapa, gambling, player regulations