Autorité Nationale des Jeux Licence requirements, fees and the French gambling regime

The Autorité Nationale des Jeux is the single independent administrative authority responsible for the regulation of all gambling activity in France. It was created on 23 June 2020 by Ordonnance n° 2019-1015 under the PACTE Law, replacing the previous online-gambling regulator ARJEL and absorbing the supervisory functions over land-based casinos, the state lottery operator Française des Jeux and the horse-racing monopoly PMU that had until then sat with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Economy and Finance.

The consolidation was deliberate. Before 2020, French gambling supervision was split across three different bodies with three different statutory bases. The PACTE Law unified them into a single regulator with a single mandate covering the full market: online sports betting, online horse-race betting, online poker, land-based casinos, the state lottery and the horse-race monopoly, and supervision of advertising and player-protection rules across all of them. The ANJ as a result regulates roughly 78 percent of the legal French gambling market by stakes, with the remainder sitting with the Service Central des Courses et Jeux of the National Police for live monitoring of casino operations.

The ANJ is an independent administrative authority. It is led by a College of seven members appointed by the President of the Republic and the presidents of the National Assembly and Senate; its inaugural President was Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, formerly the head of France\'s data protection authority (CNIL). The Autorité reports to Parliament rather than to government, and its budget is financed by the regulated sector through annual fees. Its powers were strengthened in the move from ARJEL: it can compel an operator to withdraw any commercial communication that incites excessive play, it can refuse the renewal of a licence, and from July 2025 it has had a dedicated Directorate of Enforcement under Sophie Namer with explicit responsibility for sanctioning licensed operators and pursuing illegal supply.

Operators that have spent a decade adjusting to the French regime should not underestimate the architectural shift that the 2020 consolidation represents. ARJEL regulated only online operators; the ANJ regulates the whole market. A French operator that holds an online sports-betting licence now sits inside the same supervisor that regulates the land-based casino it might also own, the FDJ retail network it competes with, and the marketing perimeter that applies to all of them.

An operator preparing French market entry should model the cost line in two halves. The visible regulatory cost is small: less than €50,000 in year one for a full three-vertical operator. The product economics are where the work happens. French sports betting payouts are capped, French poker liquidity is closed inside the PESF arrangement, and a French operator that fails to manage its payout ratio attracts the supervisory attention of the ANJ. The November 2024 sanction package on Betclic, Winamax, Unibet, PMU and NetBet for exceeding the maximum payout ratio in their 2022 activity (culminating with the Qatar World Cup) was an unambiguous signal that the cap is enforced.

Strong customer authentication and identity verification before deposit or play is required, including verification against the Interdiction Volontaire register. Anonymous play is not permitted. Player accounts are subject to limits on deposit, on session length and on permissible payment methods.

The ANJ’s technical regulation (Exigences Techniques) sets the floor for platform architecture: data hosting, archival, real-time event reporting to the regulator, random number generation, and the security of the gaming and betting systems. Operators must satisfy pre-launch certification through an ANJ-approved technical certifier and renew the certification on a defined cycle.

Operators file regular regulatory returns, notify key events (changes in ownership, key persons, material technical change, significant incidents), and respond to ad-hoc ANJ information requests. The six-month marketing-strategy filing is the most distinctive supervisory mechanism in the European regime, and is the one that has driven the most direct contact between ANJ supervisors and operator marketing teams in 2024 and 2025.

Since 2024 all licensed online operators submit their marketing strategies to the ANJ every six months. The Autorité reviews the planned creative, channels, target audiences and budgets, and can compel changes. Standing obligations apply: no targeting of minors, no portrayal of gambling as a means of generating income or as risk-free, no contradiction of responsible-gambling messaging, no advertising on services predominantly aimed at children.

The 2023 ANJ guidance restricts the use of athletes, referees and other sports figures in gambling commercial communications where those figures are likely to appeal to minors. Active sports players cannot deliver odds-related predictions or promote odds in operator commercial communications. The 2023 Loi Influence then extended French law to influencer marketing: gambling promotion by social-media influencers is heavily restricted, with criminal liability for breaches.

The Interdiction Volontaire register was originally established in 2007 under the Ministry of the Interior and required individuals seeking self-exclusion to attend a police station, complete paper forms, present identification and undergo a face-to-face interview. The legalisation of online gambling in 2010 expanded the register’s scope; the ANJ assumed responsibility in 2020. In November 2025 the ANJ launched a fully digital service at interdictiondejeux.anj.fr that replaces the paper process: registration requires ID verification, a dynamic selfie via IDnow, and yields a notification when the ban is active. The minimum term is three years and it cannot be reduced or cancelled within that window.

Operator integration is mandatory and is the most heavily supervised obligation on the market. The Unibet sanction in January 2025 (€800,000, the largest single fine in ANJ history) followed a self-exclusion system failure in which the register check did not function correctly at the platform level. The supervisory message was unambiguous: this is the part of the compliance programme that has to work.

The register holds more than 85,000 active registrations in 2026, up from 40,000 when the ANJ took over in 2020. The ANJ also operates a problem-gambler detection programme based on operator data feeds, which flagged 89,000 players in 2025 (up from 31,000 in 2024 following a detection-algorithm upgrade), and is consulting on a loss-limit obligation for players aged 18 to 25.

Three patterns stand out across the 2024 and 2025 record. First, the ANJ is willing to issue multi-operator co-ordinated sanctions for the same supervisory failing: the November 2024 payout-ratio package targeted five operators simultaneously, which sends a stronger market signal than five separate actions would. Second, self-exclusion failures attract the highest single penalties: the January 2025 Unibet fine was eight times larger than the previous record. Third, the establishment of a dedicated Directorate of Enforcement in July 2025 under Sophie Namer institutionalises the trajectory. Total 2024 sanctions stood at nine actions with fines up to €150,000; 2025 ended materially higher and 2026 has continued the line.

The enforcement focus is also shifting toward unlicensed supply. The ANJ has consistently said publicly that the French illegal market is now larger than the licensed market, and the Directorate of Enforcement is the operational answer. The 2026 action against prediction-market operator Polymarket, ordering it blocked from serving French players, was the most visible illegal-market enforcement of the year and signalled that the ANJ will pursue novel product types (binary-option-style prediction markets, crypto-denominated wagering) that fall outside the licensed verticals.