Cards Chat – Charles Coppolani, the new president of ARJEL, the French online gambling regulator, has declared that online poker in France is a “fad” that is “over”. Speaking to Les Échos in his first interview since taking up the post, Coppolani stated bluntly: “The fad is over. Basically, the online poker market may be mature.”
It’s a worrying attitude from the man in control of an online poker market that desperately needs to adopt liquidity sharing with other European nations in order to thrive. France chose to regulate and ring-fence online poker and online casino gambling in 2010, closing its liquidity borders to the rest of Europe and effectively corralling the market.
Since then, liquidity levels have reached an all-time low. An ARJEL report released just last week revealed that, during the first quarter of 2014, 12 percent fewer new online poker accounts had been created than in the corresponding quarter of 2013, continuing a downward trend that started in 2011.
In the same period the number of active accounts has dwindled from 299,000 to 263,000, costing operators around 10 percent of its revenue. In all, cash game figures fallen 15 per cent more sharply than the international market.
