Online Casino, casinos

The casino industry has been in bad form for the past two years because of the anti-tobacco laws and the checking of identity at the entrance to gaming rooms...not to mention the strong impact of the economic crisis on players purses. After two lean years the French casinos haven't stopped asking the state to come to their aid. The call was heeded. The first helping hand from the state for the casinos was the easing up of the measures necessary to have supplementary slot machines. This casino game is the most sought after and in certain establishments one armed bandits make up 95% or even 98% of the games gross product (GGP). Also, the casino groups like the Partouche group can set up cumulative jackpots which link together machines in the casinos belonging to the same group in France and a common pot can be won at any time by the players. The amount of the jackpot can reach several million euros as was the case in Annemasse casino with the Partouche Megapot. The potential gains are marvellous and provide an excellent marketing tool to attract players into casinos. Also, electronic versions of table games such as roulette or poker are available to players. These different measures undertaken by the state aim to help the 197 casinos in France cope with a loss of business of 20% over the two previous results. For the last results, November 2007 to October 2008, all the casinos in France posted a loss of over 8%. Guy Benhamou, director of the Partouche Pharoah casino, spoke to Casinoweb of the difficulties for his casino principally because of the smoking ban. Dominique Desseigne also put forward in an interview with us the urgency of state aid for casinos to save this industry. The request was heeded because the state put into place the various measures cited above and has just announced that it would ease up fiscal measures for the casinos. In fact, Eric Woerth announced that the casinos would benefit from advantageous fiscal measures and that fiscal deductions on the games gross product was going to be revised downwards...a level that hasn't been changed in 21 years! This announcement has just come in time for the casinos who needed this breath of fresh air.

The actual casinos look very favourably on these measures undertaken by the state but a serious competitor will soon come on the scene: the opening up of the online gaming market. As much as the areas of sport betting, horse racing and online poker are going to be legalised it's complete opacity on the subject of online casinos offered by numerous foreign operators under European licences. In 2010 French internet users will be able to play legally on online gaming sites covering poker, horse racing and sport betting but not online casinos. However the Partouche, Joagroupe, Barriere, Tranchant  groups already have “ready to use” casinos and french players will be able to play in them in free mode ( or play for fun) using pretend money. As for knowing when these groups could press the button to allow the players play with real money, that's another story. To be continued.

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