When France legalized and regulated online poker it came with a high price for French players, and perhaps an even higher price for the online poker rooms themselves. Online poker rooms must be licensed under the Autorite De Regulation Des Jeux En Ligne –which I will hence forth call ARJEL!–  a licensing process that comes with both a hefty licensing fee, as well as a 2% tax; which means a higher rake for French poker players.

In addition to a higher rake, French online poker players have also seen their traffic numbers dwindle since the ARJEL licensed online poker sites may only cater to French players Solet’s see: Higher rakes and less traffic, what a great combination!

Here are the top 5 poker sites in France’s traffic numbers, followed by their larger parent site’s numbers according to PokerScout.com:

* PokerStars: France 1,520 – Worldwide 26,000
* Everest Poker: France 1,280 – Worldwide 1,040
* OnGame: France 750 – Worldwide 2,350
* Party Poker: France 660 – Worldwide 3,350
* Full Tilt Poker: France 235 — Worldwide 14,200

As you can see only the French-based Everest Poker has traffic numbers that rival the rest of their traffic –which actually may hurt the site more than other sites, since their traffic has been basically cut in two. The other remarkable number is the second largest online poker room, Full Tilt Poker’s, extremely low traffic numbers –although Full Tilt was a little late to the party in receiving their ARJEL license, so they are relatively new to the French scene.

Tags: ARJEL, Autorite De Regulation Des Jeux En Ligne, french poker, French Poker Sites, Online Poker Rooms, top 5 poker sites in France

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Poker Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.