Friendbet

I was interested to see that a company called Friendbet has been licensed to operate in France.

I always knew the French hadn't understood what a betting exchange was.

They set out to ban exchanges, and came out with legislation that they think has done it.

And then they license Friendbet.

What do they think that is, if not an exchange?

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.

Estonia

The latest barmy action by a government as regards internet gambling has seen Estonia step up to the plate. As reported in Gambling Compliance today, the government there has instructed internet service providers to block access to "175 unlicensed internet gambling sites". Among the list are the brand names that you would know and recognise, other than that, by some quirk of fate, Paddy Power and bet365 have not fallen victim - yet.

The Durieux report commissioned by the French government estimated that there are 5,000 internet gambling websites out there. I wonder what Estonia plans to do about the other 4,825?

Surely it mist be abundantly clear to anyone with a brain that by definition, the sites that Estonia will name as the ones to block are the ones which are most likely to be licensed elsewhere, because otherwise the chances of Estonia ever having heard of them would be pretty slim.

Why is there any need for 5,000 sites to exist, other than because idiotic governments ban sites which consumers want to access, and encourage other people to set up sites to take advantage of the fact that those consumers are looking for a site which no Civil Servant has chanced upon?

So little thought is put into what the aim is that when Italy went down the same route, they temporarily blocked a chemical company's website, because they just assumed (and didn't check) that Gala Coral's website would be coral.com.

It should be funny. But it isn't.