Will France open up the online casino market to competition?

On June 14, in this article, I was mapping out the new offer of online gambling in France, after the enforcement of the long-awaited legislation.
This new regulation opened online horse-race and sports bets, as well as online poker, to new competitors.
Unfortunately, online casinos are left out of this law and are not deregulated.
This terrible choice led many websites such as Betfair and all the online casinos which used Playtech software to flee the French market, as I explained in those two articles: 6 new French licenses… what about online casinos and Playtech Leaves France.
On the other hand, other companies have used this opportunity specifically to target French gamblers in their ad campaigns, like the great Casino Solera, the leading online casino in Spain.

Only four months after the new legislation, the first lessons can be drawn and they are not very flattering.
After a good headstart favoured by the World Cup effect, this new market struggles to attract customers.
Many web users go on gambling websites.
However, few of them subscribe to them and even fewer bet any real money on them.
Companies explain this poor performance by two major flaws in the law: excessive taxes and a cap placed on their pay out rate at only 85%.
Because of this and of the ban on online casinos, web users keep on massively using websites offering illegal gambling.
Many specialists claim change must come as soon as possible.
Among possible solutions, we demand a greater opening of the market, as we were already discussing in this interview for the website Kuzeo on July 7.
The French market needs to undergo a greater deregulation, including on offers such as scratching cards, bingo, but first and foremost online casinos.
However, this seems to be a very sensitive issue for several reasons.
First of all, not all real-life casinos are in favour of opening the market to their virtual counterparts.
New legal competition could hurt them hard at a time when they are already facing difficulties.
On top of this, these establishments remain an important source of income for many local communities which will therefore strongly oppose the legalisation of online casinos.
Finally, many politicians seem to think slot machines and roulette would pose a more serious threat as far as gambling addiction is concerned than sports bets and poker.
This belief is nevertheless now more and more commonly challenged.If these different factors play against a deregulation of online casinos in the near future, others, on the contrary, bring us a sense of optimism.
Such a measure would allow the State to make a lot of money through taxes.
On top of this, it would be a good way to regulate an industry which keeps attracting gamblers anyway.
Finally, regulation would allow industry leaders such as William Hill, Casino Tropez or Casino Euro to come back to the French market and bring back the professionalism they have acquired in the dozen years they have existed for.
The departure of these websites has left the field open for less scrupulous or even downright fraudulent companies.
Fortunately, some new companies turn out to be trustworthy and have high standards.
While we wait for the return of the major brand-names of the industry, I recommend you a couple of up and coming websites such as Ruby Royal, Win Palace and EUCasino, among others.