Dunkirk?

As French legislation moves ever closer, more and more operators appear to be lining up to suggest that it simply isn't going to work.

An op-ed piece in Le Monde the other day, signed jointly by Betclic, Bwin, and Unibet, laid out the reasons to be fearful. Isabelle Parise, co-chair of Mangas Gaming, told the IGaming 360 conference in Madrid yesterday that there are "many things that are dreadful" in the legislation, which, as it stands, is "the worst you can imagine". And Gigi Levy, CEO of 888.com, threw into a results presentation yesterday the thought that it would be more difficult for foreign operators to get a French licence than it will be for French ones. He commented that his company operates happily under its Gibraltar licence by the terms of European law, which seems to me to indicate that they plan to continue to do so when the law comes in, just as the amiable and eloquent Patrick Partouche suggested would be true of his eponymous outfit a few weeks ago.

At Betfair we had the latest in a long series of meetings about France this morning, pondering how absurd and ridiculous the new law is, and discussing whether our since-foundation stance of complying with national legislation obliges us to withdraw from the market until we are in a position to apply formally to operate, if it ever becomes commercially viable to do so. It would be an arduous and depressing task to contact our French customers with that sort of unhappy news; but the law as it is written would require us to close accounts and block French IP addresses, with risk of arrest for non-compliance. Operators who do comply with it would have to pull out of France.

Absurd and ridiculous, though, the law unquestionably is.

The simple fact is that we know, and customers know, that there are plenty of work-arounds for IP blocking, should people chose to use them; and without operator co-operation, the chances of the French government enforcing their legislation - short of sending the police randomly into people's front rooms and catching them on their computers - is zero. Operator co-operation will only come from those with brand names to protect, so the law will shut out precisely the sort of company that ought naturally to be welcomed in.

Anyone else who wants a bit of the action in defiance of the French government has the playing field wide open, so the black market will flourish. By France's own estimates, it already equates to around 5,000 sites, even before the addition of new rogue operators which are likely to pop up in the way that music file-sharing sites did when Napster first got banned. The music industry has struggled to recover from that position ever since, but the French have chosen not to learn from past mistakes. Instead, they will deny people proper choice and competition and force those who want it to find it in the illegal market. They are failing their citizens in consequence, and it's a shame to see it.

Meanwhile, should you be sunning yourself on the Cote d'Azur this summer and realise you've forgotten to place your weekend's bets on any sport back home with the account you opened in London, unlucky. You can quite legally call your bank which is licensed in England, order from your local bookshop at home, or change your utility provider online while you think of it - not to mention whatever other uses you might want to put the internet to while you relax on your hols. But you can't both adhere to the law and type in the URL of your betting account and place bets in your own country on your domestic sport, because in their wisdom, the French say that's interdit.

Looks like it'll be Tuscany for us this year, then.