Online Casinos: ANJ launches an information campaign about the risks of illegal sites in France

ANJ's actions to combat illegal online gambling sites

The fight against illegal supply is at the heart of the ANJ's action and constitutes a priority of its 2024-2026 strategic plan.

Since March 2022, the ANJ has had the power to administratively block and delist illegal gambling sites. Since that date, 506 administrative blocking acts have been issued by the ANJ, resulting in the blocking of 2,365 URLs. Thus, thanks to this new procedure, the ANJ has managed to block almost twice as many URLs in two and a half years as in twelve years of judicial blocking proceedings.

However, the ANJ is still faced with the persistent difficulty of their rapid reappearance (the phenomenon known as "mirror sites": creation by the illegal operator of real copies of the initial sites that are distinguished from the first only by a different URL address).

As part of the deployment of a global strategy to combat illegal supply that has already begun to bear fruit, actions complementary to the administrative blocking have been undertaken by the ANJ consisting of:

Intervening with all intermediaries gravitating around this illegal supply (payment providers, technology providers, hosts, platforms, social networks, search engines, etc.) to innovate in the methods of action and intervention;

Developing cooperation with national judicial authorities and other European authorities;

Conducting information and prevention actions with various audiences.

The information campaign “100% winner?”

It is in this context that, starting in October 2024, the ANJ is launching an information campaign aimed at the general public with a dual objective:

-Remind that online casino sites are illegal in France, with one in two players saying they are unaware of this.

-Inform about the many dangers associated with this illegal offer in order to reduce risky behavior and problems related to compulsive gambling. 79% of the turnover of the illegal offer market is generated by players with problematic practices (PWC study for the ANJ 2023).

-The “100% winning?” campaign uses the codes of online casino sites with colorful and attractive visuals to attract the attention of the Internet user. The creations then remind people of the illegality of these sites and the associated risks. Broadcast from October 7, 2024, the campaign is entirely digital with the following media plan:

Videos broadcast on Snapchat and Twitch
Interactive ads on gaming applications
Web banners
Testimonial videos on Tik Tok

All creations refer to the same web page (www.risques-casino-en-ligne.fr) which explains why online casino sites are banned in France, how they are dangerous for players, and how to know them.

Discover the campaign

The risks of illegal gambling sites

Unlike the legal online gambling offered by the FDJ and the sites approved by the ANJ, the illegal offer does not present any guarantee of reliability in gaming operations, cheating on these sites being frequent. Furthermore, this offer does not provide any of the player protection mechanisms present in the legal offer: lack of protection in the event of a dispute, non-verification of majority, etc.

❌significant losses of money;

❌theft of your personal data;

❌installation of malicious computer programs;

❌addiction.