ANJ fines unnamed online betting operator €500,000 for missing high-risk players in France

France’s gambling regulator, Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ), has fined an unnamed online betting operator, referred to as Company X, €500,000 ($572,797) for failing to properly identify and support customers showing signs of problematic gambling. For PSPs and operators in regulated high-risk markets, the case is a reminder that detection and intervention are treated as separate compliance duties, not one soft bucket called “responsible gaming.”

1. The ANJ said its investigation found Company X failed to correctly identify 29 high-risk players at the appropriate risk level. Six players were not identified at all, while 23 were classified in a lower risk tier than the regulator considered justified.
2. The inquiry covered account data stored in the operator’s coffre-fort (secured data vault) between 1 October 2023 and 31 March 2024. Using a scoring system based on indicators such as deposit frequency, betting intensity, loss patterns, and self-exclusion history, the regulator identified the 30 players with the highest risk profiles; 29 of them were central to the formal grievances.
3. Company X also failed to provide sufficiently proportionate and graduated support measures to 25 of those players to moderate their gambling behaviour. The commission assessed the combined net losses of the 29 players at €683,355, while Company X recorded net gains of €190,501.86 during the same period.
4. The sanction rests on the 12 May 2010 gambling law, as amended, and the Code de la sécurité intérieure, which require licensed online operators to detect excessive or pathological gambling behaviour and support affected players. The ANJ also relied on the ministerial cadre de référence of 9 April 2021, a non-binding but authoritative framework that lists indicators such as betting frequency, chasing losses, voluntary limit changes, multiple accounts, and time spent playing.
5. The regulator made one point especially clearly: identification and accompaniment are distinct duties, and failure in either one can trigger sanctions even if the other looks fine on paper. It also said operators cannot limit themselves to the reference framework alone; they must show they have made “all necessary efforts” and may need to supplement the recommended indicators with additional relevant data.

The operator pushed back during the investigation, arguing that French law lacks a statutory definition of “pathological” gambling. The ANJ, meanwhile, has recently been sharpening its technical approach to regulation, including problem gambling, and unveiled a newly developed algorithm in May designed to identify a significantly larger number of lik