French Regulator Finds Excessive Bettors Carry Low-Profile Stakes

France’s gambling regulator, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), published its per-sport analysis of the 2025 online sports betting market on October 12, 2026, recording stakes of €11,517 million, up 12.0%, and gross gaming revenue of €1,766 million, up 10.4%. The regulator also reported that players identified as excessive carry most stakes on low-profile competitions and on bets on the result of a period of play.

The regulator said sports betting confirmed in 2025 the dynamic begun in 2024, despite a calendar without a major event. In its 18-page Note sports 2025, the ANJ states that only stakes reflect the evolution of punters’ activity and a sport’s dynamic, while gross gaming revenue depends on three factors: the volume of stakes, operator pricing, and the unpredictability of sporting results. The rise in the return rate mechanically explains the gap between the 12.0% growth in stakes and the 10.4% growth in revenue.

Football Expansion and Tennis Momentum

Football took 54.9% of stakes in 2025, at €6,320 million, up 10.2%, contributing nearly half of the segment’s stakes growth and two-thirds of its revenue growth. The ANJ said the 10.2% rise understates football’s real dynamic because 2024 benefited from Euro 2024, which generated €438 million of stakes; growth sits between 10% and 19% depending on the base effect retained, and at 14.6% excluding both the Euro and the Club World Cup.

An important part of the progression came from expansion of the offer itself, the regulator found. The Champions League went from 137 matches in 2024 to 189 in 2025, up 38%, with stakes rising 48.6% to €829 million; three-quarters of that increase came from match volume, with the average stake per match around €4.4 million, up 8%. The competition became football’s most-bet, ahead of Ligue 1 at €603 million, La Liga at €453 million and the Premier League at €428 million. The Europa League and Conference League, subject to the same format change, grew only weakly.

The new 63-match Club World Cup took €248 million in its first edition, a per-match stake of €3.9 million close to the Champions League’s €4.4 million. The year’s most-bet matches were PSG’s Champions League final against Inter Milan at €38.2 million and the Chelsea–PSG Club World Cup final at €26.7 million, which the ANJ said shows a premium for the involvement of a French team or player.

Tennis, 23.0% of stakes at €2,652 million, grew 16.0%, a pace similar to 2024, without an exceptional event. Seven tournament categories cover 94% of tennis stakes, women’s competitions account for about 40% (against 2% in football), and in July 2025 tennis carried 40% of the segment’s stakes.

Basketball stakes grew 10.0% to €1,018 million, volleyball posted the strongest relative growth of the main sports at 20.9% to €216 million, rugby rose 11.4% to €199 million, and sports outside the five main disciplines took €1,109 million, up 13.8%. In that last category, the regulator identified two vigilance points: table tennis stakes grew 47.3% to €152 million while the discipline faces heightened integrity vigilance internationally, and MMA, where operators recorded a negative annual gross gaming revenue of €9 million, concentrated in the month of UFC Paris, whose main event was the discipline’s most-bet of the year at €4.7 million.

The 85% Return-to-Player Cap

The return-to-player rate for online sports betting is capped at 85% as an annual average for each operator, and operators position their rates near the ceiling. The market rate stood at 84.67% in 2025, after 84.45% in 2024.

September 2025 results favorable to punters pushed the segment’s monthly rate to 94.5% and the cumulative figure above the cap, at 85.9%. Monthly rates of 82.3% in October and 74.2% in November, the year’s low, brought the cumulative rate down to 84.6% by the end of November, and the year closed at 84.67%. The ANJ said the sequence seems to reflect a year-end adjustment of odds, and noted that the aggregate reading does not prejudge each operator’s individual compliance with the cap, which is controlled separately.

Implied return rates by sport in 2025 ran from 83.4% for football to 84.8% for basketball, 85.2% for volleyball, 86.7% for tennis and 90.1% for rugby, dispersing further on low-volume sports, at 78.7% for ice hockey and 90.1% for cycling. The regulator said divergences between stakes and revenue growth (tennis stakes up 16.0% against revenue up 8.6%, rugby up 11.4% against 3.4%, and volleyball stakes up 20.9% against revenue up 47.2%) are explained by margin movements, not changes in punter behaviour.

Secondary Competitions and the Continuous Offer

Football’s secondary competitions, defined as those each weighing less than 2% of the sport’s stakes, together represent 37% of football stakes: €2.3 billion spread across 93 competitions out of 103 open to betting. Basketball shows the opposite structure, with the NBA alone concentrating 54% of the sport’s stakes, while it takes 35 football competitions to reach 90% of the sport’s stakes.

The live-betting share decreases with competition prominence: 26% on the Champions League, 30% to 35% on the major leagues, 48% on secondary competitions, and 50% to 58% on European second divisions and unlisted championships. At comparable prominence, competitions played outside European time slots ran 11 to 18 points higher, at 53% for the Americas and 60% for Asia and Oceania, against 42% for European secondary competitions.

The ANJ described a continuous football offer: South American leagues cover the French night, at €79 million for Brazil, €72 million for Argentina and €59 million for Colombia, and Asian and Oceanian leagues cover the morning, with China, Japan, Australia and Korea at €195 million combined. The regulator put annual stakes outside European slots at about €900 million, 14.2% of football stakes.

The segment counted 5.27 million active player accounts in 2025, up 7.9%, and 3.65 million unique players, up 8.6%, or 1.44 accounts per player. The average annual stake per bettor reached €3,159, against €2,512 in 2020, a 25% rise that the regulator said may reflect an intensification of practices.

Financial bonuses paid to sports bettors reached €180 million in 2025, or 1.6% of stakes, with 80% going to retaining existing players. Retention bonuses peaked in September 2025 at €20.5 million, against a €12 million monthly average, while acquisition bonuses peaked in the first quarter of the year.

Excessive Players and Authorized Betting Supports

An ANJ analysis of first-half 2026 football stakes showed the share of stakes from players identified as excessive or manifestly excessive appears correlated with competition prominence: the more obscure the competition, the higher the share. Such players carried more than 80% of stakes on the Brazilian, Saudi Arabian, Japanese and Australian leagues, while the recreational-profile share was highest on the 2026 World Cup, at about 35%, and 50% including moderate-risk players.

The regulator cautioned that the result does not mean those competitions are themselves more addictive: they carry only a small share of those players’ stakes and likely reflect, first, recreational punters’ disinterest.

The same exercise on second-quarter 2026 stakes by bet type found that final-outcome bets, such as a tournament winner or qualification for a final, carry the highest recreational share, at 33% in football and 36% in tennis. Bets on the result of a period of play (a half, quarter, set or game), which lend themselves to live betting, were carried by excessive or manifestly excessive players for 80% to 89% of stakes depending on the sport, and by recreational players for only 5% to 11%.

The ANJ’s excessive-gambling detection algorithm classifies players into four profiles by risk level: green, yellow, red and black, corresponding to recreational, moderate-risk, excessive and manifestly excessive players.

The regulator noted that the betting offer extends in two ways: through organizers adding matches to existing competitions, and through the ANJ’s board approving new betting supports. The finding could, in time, argue for better integration of player protection into the regulation of authorized betting supports, the ANJ said.