France’s Autorité nationale des jeux has imposed a €500,000 ($572,797) fine on an unnamed online betting operator, referred to in the decision as Company X, for failing to correctly identify and support customers exhibiting signs of problematic gambling during a six-month administrative inquiry.
Between 1 October 2023 and 31 March 2024, the ANJ reviewed account data held in the operator’s secured data vault – described in the decision as a “coffre-fort” – and applied a scoring model drawing on deposit frequency, betting intensity, loss patterns, and self-exclusion history. Of the 30 highest-risk player profiles identified by the regulator, 29 formed the basis of formal grievances: six were missed entirely by Company X, and 23 were misclassified at a lower risk tier than the ANJ’s methodology warranted.
The commission calculated combined net losses for those 29 players at €683,355, with Company X recording net gains of €190,501.86 across the same period. A further 25 of the 29 players received inadequate or insufficiently graduated support interventions from the operator.
Legal Basis and Operator Defence
The sanctions commission grounded its ruling in the 12 May 2010 gambling law and the Code de la sécurité intérieure, both of which require licensed online operators to detect excessive or pathological gambling and intervene to support affected players. It also relied on the ministerial cadre de référence of 9 April 2021, a non-binding but authoritative framework specifying expected risk indicators – betting frequency, loss-chasing, voluntary limit adjustments, multiple accounts, and time spent playing.
Company X contested the action on several grounds, arguing that French law provides no statutory definition of “excessive” or “pathological” gambling, disputing specific indicator applications such as the counting of completed bets and the treatment of voluntary limit portability across reopened accounts, and asserting that automated warning emails and temporary account suspensions constituted adequate graduated interventions. The commission rejected each argument, confirming that the cadre de référence is directly incorporated into law and that automated emails alone fall short of the required standard – particularly where high-risk players continued to receive promotional bonuses.
The commission also drew a clear enforcement line between two independently actionable duties: identifying players at risk and providing proportionate support. Failure on either front warrants sanctions regardless of performance on the other, the decision confirmed.
Enforcement Pattern and Broader Implications
Company X has prior enforcement history with the ANJ, having been fined in 2024 for breaching the statutory payout rate ceiling for 2022. The commission declined to escalate the fine cap on the basis of that earlier sanction, treating the responsible-gambling violations as a distinct matter. The operator’s remedial actions – including an upgraded detection algorithm and an expanded player-protection team – were noted but did not materially reduce the penalty.
The case reflects a measurable shift in how the ANJ is approaching player-protection oversight. The regulator has recently upped its technical approaches to regulation, including problem gambling. They unveiled a newly developed algorithm in May designed to identify a significantly larger number of likely problem gamblers in online and in-play wagering than those currently reported by gambling operators.
Company X has a two-month window from formal notification of the decision to lodge an administrative appeal with the relevant courts.
Source: iGaming Business
Renata Kovacs has spent the better part of a decade following the regulatory shifts and licensing battles that define how gambling markets open, close, and evolve across Europe and beyond. She came up through the legal and compliance side of the industry before shifting her focus to journalism and analysis, giving her a perspective that sits closer to the operator room than the press box. Her coverage tends to cut through the noise and get straight to what a regulatory change actually means for the businesses and players involved.