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New Gambling Regulator Officially Launches in
June 23, 2020 Andrej Vidovic
has a new gambling regulator – L’Authorite Nationale des Jeux (ANJ). This governing body was launched on Monday, June 22nd during the board’s first formal meeting.
ANJ will oversee all forms of gambling in this Western European country: online gambling, land-based casinos, horse races batting, lottery games, sports betting and everything in between. L’Autorite Nationale de Regulation des Jeux en Ligne (ARJEL) was in charge of online gambling market only.
A Different Kind of Regulation
ANJ’s remit will cover the 14 licensed online operators…
…retail and online lottery and betting games sold by Francaise des Jeux and Pari-Mutuel Urbain’s network of retail betting outlets and on-course bookmakers.
ANJ will be regulating 202 brick-and-mortar casinos in the country, but won’t be looking into anti-money laundering and integrity matters. This will remain the Ministry of Home Affair’s responsibility.
In total, ANJ will cover 78% of the regulated French market. Comparatively, ARJEL used to cover just 11% of it.
and Control
On March 4th, a decree formalizing the transition of power from ARJEL to ANJ came into effect, when ANJ became the country’s new regulator. ANJ president Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, said:
“The ANJ is not an enlarged ARJEL, it is a new project that requires rethinking regulation. It has to adapt its interventions to monopolies and to players gambling mostly anonymously in points of sale.
I would like to set up a regulation that combines and control in order to better serve and protect players.”
The Scope of Responsibilities
There will be four core objectives in ANJ’s work:
- To prevent problem gambling and protect children and young adults
- To prevent fraudulent and criminal activities
- To ensure the balanced and fair development of games
- To ensure integrity, reliability and transparency of gambling
The new regulatory body will be more influential than previous one, because they will have the power to order an operator to stop advertising and will have the ability to carry out on-site controls.
ANJ will also hand out licenses to operators. The body is currently finalizing its strategy for prevention of gambling addiction and protection of vulnerable groups. They will also outline the ways in which they will fight fraud, money laundering and financing of terrorism.
These strategies will be submitted to stakeholders for consultations.
In , gross gaming revenue for the three months to 31 March 2020 was up 21.8% year-on-year to €435m (£393.8m/$488.3m), driven by continued growth in sports betting.
Source:
“ANJ officially takes charge of gambling regulation in ”, igamingbusiness.com, June 22nd 2020
Well, good luck to them. Hope they bring some order into the market.