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French sports betting regulations aren't working

Complaints this week in Monaco at the first gaming industry conference centred upon France with Mangas (BetClic, Expect, bet-at-home) CEO Nicolas Beraud claiming the anti-problem gambling directives from the French government are actually having the reverse effect - players lose their money quicker with higher margins and thus want to bet more as they chase their losses....

French player returns uncompetitive says Mangas boss

Mangas Gaming chief executive Nicolas Beraud has called for the French authorities to increase what it currently allows to pay back to players, as the current 85% limit is failing in its publicly declared aim of protecting the consumer.

Speaking yesterday on the Online Sports & Horse Betting Markets panel at France’s first ever egaming conference, Monaco iGaming Exchanges, Beraud said: “Today, we cannot give better than an 85% return to the player, which means the odds are not competitive compared to other markets. It is an incentive for players to try to play on foreign websites, and the customers can lose their money much more quickly than previously.

“The excuse to have this 85% was to protect the consumer, but what we are seeing is the customer is instead losing his money more quickly and is actually playing more.”

Speaking on the same panel, Emmanuel de Rohan Chabot, chief executive of horse racing tote operator ZEturf observed of current tax and payback conditions that if “there wasn’t such a difference in pressure between the legal and illegal worlds, it would not be so hard to keep the punter inside the French market, and it is a hard job.”

Chabot told the audience: “In between the ZEturf.com and the ZEturf.fr we are on now, the average punter is losing €110 a month when he used to lose just €60 a month. The objective of reducing gaming addiction and risk is clearly a failure on that point, so I am completely with Nicolas on that one.”

Of course, from the side of the monopoly, another panellist blamed the problem on lack of sanctions against firms not licensed in France, which completely misses the point. Fat margins do nothing to protect punters - gambling addicts are more often, but not always, people with poor comprehension of the percentages behind gambling. While they still think they have a chance of winning, they will keep playing, and the more expensive it is in terms of margins, the more it will cost them in the long run.

An 85% return to punters is poor (117.6% overrround if you prefer to see it the other way around). That's uncompetitive on 1x2 football markets, so it's completely pointless for two-way sports like tennis( - although PMU.fr are listing tennis h2h markets at 112% so there may be some concession for two-way markets?).Posted byScott Fergusonat12:11

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French racing operator ZEturf raises €9m from investor

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International Soccer – French National team still a disappointment

Laurent Blanc

If you have to take a look at the biggest losers from South Africa World Cup 2010, the French must have to be among the top three, if we cut some slack. Now if we are bit more critic about what the French were expected to do, and what they finally did, they were by far the most disappointing team out there, not only for their poor performance in the field but also because of what happened behind the cameras in the locker rooms.

France had to return to the basics and rebuild its team from scratch. But the fall of French football is far from over, as most Les Blues could testify after their 1-0 loss against Belarus in their opening game for the Euro 2012 Championship qualifier stage. Oh, and by the way, the French were playing before 72,000 fans that had filled the Stade de France in Saint Denis.

Sergei Kislyac was the men who opened up the French defense like a knife into butter and took a good shot against the French keeper who could not do much to keep the ball from entering the right top corner of his goal. Vyacheslav Hleb skillfully managed to make a lot of trouble in the right side of the penalty box. He held control of the ball for a couple of valuable seconds, made a quick move from the outside to face the goal. He could have taken a shot against French keeper Hugo Loris, but instead send the ball back to Kislyac who fired from a distance to finish off the French squad with little over 4 minutes left in the game.

And it was there. The odds were certainly on the side of the French. But considering how they have been playing lately, considering that despite the change from Raymond Domenech to that of Laurent Blanc on the helm, it seem very plausible that despite the new skipper, the French boat was still vulnerable and very capable of sinking. And so it did.

The French Soccer Federation really has to take a look at what is going on with its players. Not only have their men not lived up to the standards, not to say the expectations; they even went to strike on a training session. Yes, that is right, they made a strike. We are talking about players who in the lowest-end of spectrum make over a million dollars of net income per year.

But it keeps getting better. Not only did they had their own little strike, this is a team that has not won a game in the South Africa 2010 World Cup, but they failed to make it pass on the first round of the Euro 2008, where, they did not win a single game either. Now, those guys really need to have some courage to go out there and go on strike.

Laurent Blanc has now a very difficult road in front of him. He has to change the mentality of the group; he has to deal with a team with many big names but no sense of unity. The French team is in crisis. And they better figure out a good plan before they go out to face Bosnia on Thursday.

Laurent Blanc had urged his players to sign the national anthem. He even gave out copies with the lyrics so that his players could sign along. He is got to do much more then just get his men singing.