Francaise des Jeux (FDJ) and TF1, France’s largest commercial TV channel, have signed an online gaming and sponsorship agreement ahead of the liberalisation of the French egaming market expected in June.
The three-year partnership will see FDJ, France's betting and lottery monopoly, sponsor a number of TV shows on TF1 and provide a dedicated egmaing space on the channel's website, TF1.fr, which has around 15 million unique visitors every month, according to a joint statement by both companies.
TF1 is part of the Bouygues conglomerate, which is also the parent company of Eurosport TV and SPS Betting, the egaming firm operating Eurosportsbet, and recorded a turnover of €2.26bn in 2009.
FDJ, meanwhile, had a turnover of €9.9bn in 2009 and is the second biggest lottery operator in the world behind Italy's Lottomatica.
The egaming site on TF1 will provide lottery and sports betting products to French punters and the channel's porgramming will include exclusive content related to betting and gaming sponsored by FDJ in time for the football World Cup in June.
The partnership will also give TF1 the opportunity to exploit some of FDJ's scratch card game formats, which represented around €3.8bn of the monopoly's turnover last year, with popular TF1 shows appearing on FDJ scratch cards.
Very dodgy. It seems no other E.U operators are allowed to do anything in France yet, so FDJ has free reign to get itself in position as the number 1 in the new marketplace. So much for the freemarket, eh?
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