ANJ: French online sports betting GGR €1.77bn in 2025; problem-bet patterns revealed

The French National Gaming Authority (ANJ) reported that online sports betting gross gaming revenue reached €1,766 million in 2025, a 10.4% increase year-on-year, while total stakes rose 12.0% to €11,517 million. ANJ's review, published in late 2025, attributes the rise to football and tennis activity and highlights distinct wagering patterns among players identified as excessive when ANJ examined early‑2026 football data.

Market scale and the drivers behind growth in online sports betting

ANJ's figures show a market that expanded despite a calendar without major international tournaments in 2025. Football accounted for 54.9% of bets and generated roughly two-thirds of gross gaming revenue, making it the dominant product in the online betting mix. Tennis contributed 23.0% of total stakes and recorded a 16.0% growth rate across the year without any exceptional single-event effects.

The regulator draws a direct line between product availability and turnover. The number of UEFA Champions League matches available to bettors increased from 137 in 2024 to 189 in 2025; that schedule expansion corresponded with a 48.6% jump in stakes on those fixtures. ANJ's analysis singles out the Champions League as a concentrated source of additional activity rather than a diffuse uplift across all football competitions.

For operators and platform suppliers this underlines an operational truth: calendar design and fixture availability materially shift stake volumes and revenue mix. Changes to match counts and live-offerings require capacity in pricing, risk and live-betting product feeds.

Return to player management: operating close to the regulatory cap

ANJ enforces an annual average return to player (RTP) ceiling of 85.00% per operator. At the close of November 2025 the observed annual RTP across the market stood at 84.67%, indicating operators were operating very close to the regulatory upper limit.

That management of RTP appears deliberate. ANJ's report interprets the near-cap figure as the outcome of market adjustments rather than a statistical anomaly. For compliance teams, keeping the annual average below 85% will remain a reporting and product-design focus, especially given how marginal movements can have licensing implications.

Behavioural patterns: insights into excessive and manifestly excessive players

ANJ supplemented its market metrics with targeted behavioural analysis, using early‑2026 football betting data to contrast recreational players and those flagged as excessive or manifestly excessive. The regulator found clear distinctions in product and market selection.

Players identified as excessive placed more than 80% of their stakes on secondary leagues, with ANJ naming regional markets where this concentration was strongest: Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia. These same players showed a pronounced preference for live betting on discrete periods of play — halves, quarters, sets or single games — with 80% to 89% of their stakes allocated to those in-play market windows.

By contrast, recreational bettors tended to favour high-profile competitions and tournament outcomes. ANJ cites the 2026 FIFA World Cup as an example of the kind of major-event demand profile recreational customers gravitate toward, including bets on final results and tournament-wide markets.

What the findings mean for player protection and product teams

ANJ interprets the behavioural split as actionable intelligence for safeguarding measures. The regulator suggests that patterns of concentrated staking on secondary leagues and very high in-play exposure can help identify problematic play earlier in the customer journey.

Practical measures operators could derive from ANJ's analysis include tighter monitoring rules for customers who:

1. Allocate over 80% of stakes to secondary leagues named in the report, or

2. Direct more than 80% of activity into short-period live markets (halves, quarters, sets), or

3. Exhibit sudden increases in stake concentration on fixtures added to an expanded calendar.

ANJ notes these signals could inform enhanced protection workflows on authorised platforms, from targeted messaging and staking limits to temporary account reviews.

Product implications for live betting and calendar design

ANJ's data links market mechanics and harm exposure. The expansion of available Champions League fixtures demonstrates how increasing match counts — and therefore available live windows — lifts stakes sharply in the segments that also attract heavier betting patterns.

For product managers that means two operational priorities: ensuring real-time pricing and risk infrastructure can scale with fixture volume, and building behavioural detection into live-betting product logic. Suppliers in sports content feeds, odds feeds and in-play risk engines will see demand where operators need fast allocation of exposure and enhanced player-protection triggers.

Regulatory context and next steps

ANJ published the report as part of its ongoing supervision of the French online betting market. The regulator frames the findings as a basis for possible future adjustments to authorised platform protections and monitoring expectations. Market participants should expect ANJ to use these behavioural markers when assessing compliance with responsible-gambling obligations.

Operators and compliance teams should review their RTP reporting, live-betting telemetry and market-availability controls in light of the report. ANJ's analysis provides concrete thresholds and market examples that can be translated into internal rules and audit evidence for regulators.