Tuesday October 11, 2011 : Tough fiscal and regulatory regime cited as operators request licence revocation
The French regulatory authority for online gambling ARJEL has on the Amaury Group's request withdrawn online gaming and online sportsbetting licences awarded to its online gaming business SAjOO following its merge with bwin France. The merge was undertaken by the two groups to optimise profits in a challenging regulatory and fiscal regime in the French gaming market.
Zeturf France Limited has been granted approval of its online horserace betting software and Iliad Gaming for its "Freebox" online sportsbetting software by the authority. In addition, Iliad Gaming SAS has been granted a licence authorising it to operate online poker and games as well as sports betting from the domain chili.fr.
Confirming the challenging French regulatory and financial regime, 200% Poker SA has requested and been granted a revocation of its ARJEL licence with the site lying dormant since early May 2011. The company reported to ARJEL that if found it difficult to develop and compete within the current stringent fiscal parameters of the French market and had failed to perform to expectation.