French Senate Approves Shared Player Liquidity

The French Senate approved an amendment to its gaming regime last week to allow for shared player liquidity with other countries in the European Union and the European Economic Area.

French gaming regulator Autorité de régulation des jeux en ligne (ARJEL), who has been pushing for an amendment to be adopted for some time with hopes that it would jumpstart the country’s struggling ring-fenced online gaming market, informally announced its approval on May 3.

French-licensed online poker operators can currently offer services to players outside of France, however, players residing in France are restricted to playing on these networks. This, along with high tax-rates applied to online gaming operators in the country, are believed to be the main reasons for the consistent decline in the country’s online poker market since its peak in 2011, and why almost half of the of the country’s players are active on unlicensed sites.

ARJEL and other vested groups pushed for years to amend gaming laws to allow for shared player liquidity. Hopes began to rise that this could become a reality a little more than a year ago when Poker Industry Pro reported that French President Charles Coppolani proposed international shared liquidity in a meeting with French Budget Minister Christian Eckert. …

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