Report Highlights Problems Of Underage Gambling In France

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Friday, May 22nd, 2015 | Written by Shane Larson

Gambling is big business in France, and last year the country generated €44 billion in revenues, with online gaming generating €725 million of that tally. However, it seems that not all is as it should be with up to a third of all French minors having apparently gambled online at some time throughout the year, according to a new study produced by the French Games Observatory (ODJ) and The French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT).

Efforts Failing To Prevent Underage Gambling

As part of the study, the gambling habits of 665 French children were surveyed, with 33% of respondents admitting to having gambled during the year, mostly at a retail outlet. The number one gambling game for under 18’s was subsequently found to be scratch cards, followed by sports betting, and then lottery games. Even more worrying, around 11% of respondents were discovered to have exhibited some form of “problematic” gambling behavior, more than double the rate found in adults, and therefore highlighting the dangers of underage gambling. Moreover, the study concluded that efforts to prevent minors from gambling are failing, and that a whole set of new measures need to be introduced to deal with the growing problem.

Gambling Numbers Up Since 2010

Between the ages of 15 and 75, a huge 56% of respondents said that they had gambled during the past year, a figure 10% higher than five years ago. Interestingly, that date coincides with the introduction of regulated online gambling in 2010, but the study found just 4% of respondents gamble over the internet, rising to 6.5% for underage players, suggesting online gambling is unlikely to be the driving force behind the increase in numbers. Nevertheless, 6.5% is still a high figure for underage online gambling, and will likely provide a talking point for online gambling debates on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ammunition For Both iGaming Supporters And Opponents

Results from the joint study could equally be used by both iGaming supporters and opponents to prove their points, although in truth the statistics actually provide a more realistic snapshot of the situation which currently exists in the online gambling industry. US anti-online gambling groups, for instance, have often argued that tech-savvy underage gamblers are able to circumvent safety measures and access internet gambling websites, whilst the Poker Players Alliance has instead highlighted the fact that in roughly a year and a half of regulated iGaming not one case of underage betting has thus far been reported from the country’s three regulated states. However, the recent French study suggests a small percentage of minors will still be able to access gambling sites undetected, often by using the names of their parents, relatives or friends.

Lotteries, etc Bigger Danger Than iGaming

That said, the French study found teenagers were more likely to gamble in retail venues rather than online, giving further ammunition for proponents to counter the arguments of people like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson who have been arguing that online websites provided the easiest way for minors to start gambling. The Las Vegas Sands (LVS) CEO owns the Sands Bethlehem, Pennsylvania’s second largest brick-and-mortar casino, and at a House Gaming Oversight Committee which met recently to discuss Representative John Payne’s pro-online gambling bill HB 649, LVS senior executive Andy Abboud reiterated Adelson’s familiar argument that online gambling represents a “threat to minors,” and that “the largest and most successful internet companies have had tremendous difficulty restricting child access to their websites.”

The Poker Players’ Alliance, however, counteracted Abboud’s argument by stating that while there has been no reports of underage internet gambling from the USA’s three regulated states of Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey, the Sands Bethlehem has recently received $305,000 in fines for a number of instances of underage gambling on its casino floor. The PPA’s full rebuttal of the LVS executive can be found here, entitled ‘Andy Abboud’s Testimony of Myths‘. As an extract from the interesting piece explains:

“Restricting underage access to Internet gaming websites is something that all regulated operators address. The U.S. states that currently regulate Internet gaming, and regulated markets in Europe, require very high standards of identity verification… Failure to undertake rigorous age verification could result in the loss of the license and closure of the business.”