Online sports betting: which sports or competitions are driving growth?

With €11.5 billion in stakes (+12.0%) and €1,766 million in GGR (+10.4%), online sports betting confirmed in 2025 the momentum initiated in 2024, despite a calendar lacking any major event. 

The analysis by sport conducted by the ANJ leads to three main findings:

1 - Growth driven by the expansion of the football offering and the progression of tennis

Football, accounting for 54.9% of stakes, contributes to nearly half of the segment's stake growth and two-thirds of its GGR growth. Its progression (+10.2%) underestimates its actual momentum, as 2024 benefited from the Euro ( €438M in stakes). Its growth thus lies between +10% and +19% depending on the chosen base effect.

A significant portion of this progression comes from the expansion of the offering itself. In 2025, the Champions League went from 137 matches in 2024 to 189 in 2025 (+38%), with stakes up by +48.6%. Three-quarters of this increase are explained by the rise in the volume of matches, while the average stake per match progressed more moderately, in proportions consistent with the general intensification of practices observed on the segment. This effect does not apply to all competitions. The Europa League and the Conference League, subject to the same format evolution, progressed only slightly. The Club World Cup, a new competition with a 63-match format, achieved a stake per match of €3.9M right in its first edition, close to that of the Champions League (€4.4M), football's flagship product.

The matches with the highest stakes of the year show a premium for the involvement of a French team or athlete: the top two are PSG finals (€38.2M and €26.7M).

Tennis (23.0% of stakes) presents a different profile: growth of +16.0% without any exceptional event.

2 - A stake structure revealing a set of secondary competitions* of low notoriety

Sports exhibit contrasting supply structures. In basketball, the NBA alone concentrates 54% of stakes; in tennis, 7 tournament categories cover 94% of stakes; conversely, in football, it takes 35 competitions to reach 90% of stakes out of the 103 competitions open to betting.

The share of live betting decreases with the notoriety of the competitions: from 26% on the Champions League and 30% to 35% on major championships, it reaches 48% on secondary competitions, and up to 50% to 58% on European second divisions and the generic category of unlisted championships. This football offering is available continuously. In addition to European time slots, South American championships cover the night, and Asian and Oceanian championships cover the morning.

3 - Structured management of the return-to-player rate (RTP)

The return-to-player rate (RTP) for online sports betting is capped at 85%, on an annual average and for each operator. This represents the maximum proportion of sums paid out on average to players by sports betting operators. Operators position their RTP close to this ceiling. In 2025, it stood at 84.67%.

The 2025 fiscal year offers an illustration of the impact of this mechanism on the market. In September, sports results favorable to bettors brought the monthly RTP to 94.5% for the segment and the cumulative RTP above the ceiling (85.9%). The monthly RTPs for October and November (82.3% then 74.2%) brought the cumulative figure back to 84.67% at the end of November. This sequence seems to reflect an adjustment in odds at the end of the year. This aggregated reading does not prejudge the individual situation of each operator regarding the ceiling, which is subject to separate oversight.

Practices of players identified as excessive

An analysis of football stakes from the first half of 2026 shows that the share of stakes coming from players identified as excessive or manifestly excessive appears to be linked to the notoriety of the competitions: the more confidential the competition, the higher this share is. Competitions best known to the general public are those where the share of stakes from recreational profile players is the highest (2026 World Cup). Conversely, players identified as excessive or manifestly excessive account for more than 80% of stakes on the Brazilian, Saudi Arabian, Japanese, or Australian championships. This result does not mean that these competitions inherently possess a higher addictive potential. They account for only a small share of these players' stakes, and likely reflect first and foremost the lack of interest from recreational bettors.

The same analysis on types of results leads to a similar observation. On the stakes of the second quarter of 2026, bets focusing on the final result of a competition, such as the winner of a tournament or qualification for a final, are those where the share of recreational players' stakes is highest. Conversely, bets on the outcome of a period of play (half-time, quarter, set, or game), which lend themselves to live betting, are driven, depending on the sport, by 80% to 89% of their stakes from excessive or manifestly excessive players. This finding could eventually argue for the integration of player protection into the regulation of authorized betting formats.

*Defined as those each accounting for less than 2% of the discipline's stakes for football.

The ANJ's excessive gambling detection algorithm classifies players into four profiles: green, yellow, red, and black, depending on their risk level (recreational player, moderate-risk player, excessive player, manifestly excessive player).