- From ARJEL to the ANJ: A Short History
- How the ANJ Is Organised
- The ANJ's Four Core Missions
- The Rules Online Bookmakers Must Follow
- Protecting the Integrity of Football
- Watching the Marketing Machine
- Fighting Illegal Betting Sites
- What the Numbers Show
- The 2026 World Cup: A Record for French Betting
- What Comes Next
- Why the ANJ Matters to Football Fans
French football fans staked more than €1.3 billion online during the 2026 World Cup, over twice as much as in 2022. Every one of those bets went through a tightly controlled system. Here is who runs it, what the rules are and how they protect the game.
France has one of Europe’s biggest betting markets, but also one of its strictest. Only a small group of licensed companies can take online sports bets, payouts are capped by law, and online casino games are still banned. One body sits at the centre of all this: the Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ), the National Gaming Authority.
For football fans, the ANJ decides which matches can be bet on, how bookmakers advertise around games, and when betting on a suspicious fixture should stop. This guide explains where the regulator came from, how it is organised, the rules it enforces and what its latest figures reveal about football betting in France.
From ARJEL to the ANJ: A Short History
Before 2010, legal betting in France meant two state-backed monopolies: La Française des Jeux (FDJ) for lotteries and sports betting, and the PMU for horse racing. The law of 12 May 2010 opened online sports betting, horse racing betting and poker to licensed private companies, just weeks before the 2010 World Cup. A new regulator, ARJEL, was created to issue licences and police the market.
ARJEL only covered online gambling. A government ordinance of 2 October 2019, linked to the privatisation of FDJ, replaced it with a wider authority. The ANJ began work in June 2020 and now regulates the whole gambling sector, both the competitive online market and the exclusive rights held by FDJ and the PMU in shops and on the internet.
How the ANJ Is Organised
The ANJ is an independent administrative authority, so it does not take orders from ministers. Its decisions come from a college of nine part-time members, appointed for a single six-year term that cannot be renewed. Two are named by the presidents of the National Assembly and the Senate, and six by government decree.
The president leads the college. Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, the ANJ’s first president, completed her six-year term in 2026. Pascal Chevremont, a senior civil servant who had overseen FDJ for the state’s financial control body, was approved by both houses of Parliament on 17 June 2026 and now runs the authority, which has a staff of 82.
Two other bodies matter to players and operators. A separate sanctions committee, made up of six senior judges from France’s top courts, can issue warnings, suspend a licence or impose fines of up to 5% of an operator’s turnover. A mediator, Jérôme Gallot since December 2024, handles disputes between players and licensed operators free of charge.
The ANJ’s Four Core Missions
By law, the ANJ has four main jobs. It must prevent excessive gambling and protect minors, ensure that games and bets are honest and secure, keep a fair balance between the different gambling sectors, and fight fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling. Everything it does with online betting links back to these goals.
The Rules Online Bookmakers Must Follow
A licence for every operator
No company can legally take online bets from players in France without ANJ approval. Licences are granted for five years and must be renewed, and the regulator checks each company’s finances, technology and player protection systems before approving it. Licensed sites must display the ANJ logo. In January 2026, the ANJ reviewed 17 licensed online operators, plus FDJ and the PMU.
A capped payout rate
France limits how much bookmakers can return to players. Over a full year, each operator’s average return to player (TRJ) on sports betting cannot exceed 85%. The aim is to reduce the risk of addiction and money laundering, but it also means odds in France are often slightly lower than abroad. In 2025, the market’s average payout rate was 84.67%.
Only approved competitions and bet types
Bettors cannot wager on just anything. The ANJ keeps an official list of the sports, competitions and types of bets that licensed operators may offer, prepared after consulting the sports federations. Competitions involving minors are excluded, as are events considered too easy to manipulate. Permitted formats include single, combined, live and long-term bets.
Player protection tools
Betting is only open to adults aged 18 and over, and operators must verify each new customer’s identity and age. Players must set a weekly deposit limit; lowering it takes effect at once, while raising it requires a delay. Anyone can also join the national register of excluded players, which bans them from all legal gambling for at least three years.
Protecting the Integrity of Football
Because so much money is bet on football, match-fixing is a major concern. The ANJ watches betting patterns for warning signs such as unusually large stakes or sudden, unexplained drops in odds. It shares information with France’s national platform against the manipulation of sports competitions, which brings together the police, the sports ministry, federations and the regulator.
The ANJ’s president can also ban betting on a specific match when there is serious and consistent evidence of manipulation, or when the competition organiser asks. In August 2020, for example, the ANJ banned all bets on a Europa League qualifying match after strong suspicions that it had been fixed.
Watching the Marketing Machine
Since its creation, the ANJ has approved each operator’s annual promotional strategy, covering advertising, sponsorship and bonuses. For 2026, operators announced combined budgets of €785 million, 25% more than in 2025. About 21% of that was planned for the World Cup period in June and July, and 44% for digital media.
The ANJ approved the plans with conditions. For the first time, every operator had to stay within its announced total, and some were told to cut social media budgets or show restraint in sports sponsorship. The regulator has also proposed a TV “whistle to whistle” ban on betting adverts from five minutes before kick-off to five minutes after the final whistle. That idea is not yet law. A 15% tax on gambling marketing has applied since July 2025.
Fighting Illegal Betting Sites
Illegal operators remain the ANJ’s biggest challenge. A 2023 study commissioned by the regulator estimated that the black market generated between €748 million and €1.5 billion a year, about 5% to 11% of the total market. Around three million people used illegal offers at least once a month, and half of illegal traffic went to online casino games, which are banned in France.
A law of 2 March 2022 gave the ANJ’s president the power to order internet providers and search engines to block or delist illegal sites, a job that previously needed a court. The process now takes about two months instead of six to nine. In 2024 alone, the ANJ issued 232 blocking orders covering 1,337 web addresses, including 910 “mirror” copies of sites that had already been blocked.
What the Numbers Show
The ANJ publishes detailed market data every year. In 2025, the whole French gambling market produced €14.1 billion in gross gaming revenue, which is the money staked minus the winnings paid back. The online share grew faster, by 8.5%, to €2.6 billion. Online sports betting led that growth.
| Online sports betting, 2025 | Figure |
| Total stakes | €11.5 billion (+12%) |
| Gross gaming revenue | €1.77 billion (+10.4%) |
| Active player accounts | 5.3 million |
| Unique players | 3.6 million |
| Bets placed | 796 million |
| Average stake | €14.50 |
| Football stakes | €6.2 billion (about 55% of the total) |
Source: ANJ, Bilan du marché des jeux d’argent et de hasard 2025 (published April 2026).
Football is clearly the engine of the market. One of the biggest drivers in 2025 was the new UEFA Champions League format, which increased the number of matches from 137 to 189. Stakes on the competition rose 48.6%, and the ANJ linked about three-quarters of that rise to the extra games. Live betting is also important, with 30% to 35% of stakes on major domestic leagues placed during matches.
The 2026 World Cup: A Record for French Betting
The 2026 World Cup showed the scale of football betting under the ANJ’s watch. According to the regulator, French players staked more than €1.3 billion online during the tournament, compared with €597 million at the 2022 World Cup. Gross gaming revenue reached €157 million, and around 113 million bets were placed, against 54 million four years earlier.
The number of bettors rose by more than 40%, from 2.2 million to 3.1 million. Les Bleus’ run created the biggest moment: the semi-final between France and Spain on 14 July attracted €63 million in online stakes, the most for any single match since the market opened in 2010.
The ANJ also used the tournament to highlight risk. It reported that 471,000 players lost more than €100 during the World Cup, while 217,000 won at least that amount, and it estimated that 15% of French bettors show a high probability of excessive gambling.
What Comes Next
Several debates will shape the ANJ’s next steps. Online casino games remain illegal in France. In October 2024, the government withdrew a plan to open the sector after strong opposition from land-based casinos and addiction groups, and chose consultation instead.
Advertising is another open question. Some MPs want rules similar to France’s Évin law on alcohol, which would ban betting adverts during matches and on social media. At his June 2026 hearing, Chevremont said he did not support such a law “for the moment”, arguing that current rules were “starting to be quite solid” and should be improved step by step. His stated priorities are making the legal offer more attractive than illegal sites and stopping minors from opening accounts.
Why the ANJ Matters to Football Fans
France’s model is built on control rather than open competition. A limited number of licensed bookmakers, a payout cap, an approved list of competitions and strong blocking powers give the ANJ more tools than many European regulators. The trade-off is that odds can be lower and online casino play pushes some players towards illegal sites.
With football providing more than half of all online sports stakes and the 2026 World Cup setting new records, the ANJ’s decisions now reach far beyond the betting industry. They shape the adverts fans see around matches, the protection players receive and the safeguards that help keep French football clean.
