Gambling is popular almost everywhere around the globe. The games are designed to be fun and addictive to play after all and who doesn’t want to chance to be able to turn their life around with a massive win? This applies to France where it boasts of having some of the oldest and biggest gaming casinos in Europe, and of course, there’s also this little fact that many wouldn’t have known about the roulette - Did you know that the roulette wheel was invented by the French mathematician, Blaise Pascal?

Due to this, it would come as a surprise to you, especially if you’re not French, to know that France has a very tight grip on all gambling activities on its soil, virtual or otherwise, with most of all on online gambling sites being state-owned. It was only a decade ago when the French government, under immense pressure from the European Union, has agreed to pass the Gambling Act No. 2010-476, or what is commonly known as the French Gambling Act.

This Act basically opens up the online gambling market in France to other operators from within the European Union, ending the long-held monopoly by the Government over online gambling and encouraging competition between gambling operators, usually to the benefit of the players like you.

It also legalizes 3 specific types of online gambling activities, namely online sports betting, which came just in time for the 2010 World Cup, resulting in a whopping €83 million-worth of all bets placed; online horse race wagering; and online poker games, including Texas Hold'em Limit, Texas Hold'em pot limit, Texas Hold'em no limit and Omaha Poker. The online poker legalization didn’t really surprise anyone mainly because poker is deemed as a skill-based sport by the French government and rightly so!

In order to regulate all of these new avenues of online gambling, the new French Gambling Act introduced a new regulatory body, ARJEL or the “Regulatory authority for online games”, as well. ARJEL joins its other fellow regulators, namely the PMU (Pari Mutuel Urbain) which handles horse racing, and (FDJ) Française des Jeux that deals in betting games and lotteries, to make up the current main regulatory bodies of the gambling industry in France.

Now, as far as France has progressed in relation to its gambling industry by releasing its grip on its monopolistic practices, the French government is still under heavy fire from local and industry players alike. The main complaints being that local brick-and-mortar French casinos are prevented from offering their gambling services online, which is something that the French would definitely be able to get behind during unprecedented times like this, and that the only legal online gambling options are too restrictive. Surely, there are plenty of players in France who would love to play slots, roulette, bingo and other forms of gambling on the internet as well!

Thankfully, French government is still moving in the right direction, showing promising signs that in the future, players in France will finally be able to play any gambling games they like legally in the comfort of their homes or even while on the go.