French operator La Française des Jeux (FDJ) recorded a 1.8 percent increase in stakes collected in 2013, up to Euro 12.35 billion compared to Euro 12.14 billion in 2012.
Sales in the operators retail network, which comprises 96.7 percent of total sales rose by 1.7 percent while internet sales grew by 5.5 percent to Euro 410 million.
Other Group key performance highlights for the 2013 fiscal period include:
– 27.1 million Players up by 800,000 placed average stakes of Euro 8.8 per week, down 1.2 percent
– Euro 8.07 billion in prizes paid, up 2.5 percent
– Euro 621 million paid to local retailers, up 5.7 percent
– Euro 3 billion in contributions to public interest, of which Euro 230 million was allocated to sport.
– Sports betting exceeded Euro 1.65 billion in sales and accounted for 13.3 percent of total sales, up by 14.4 percent over 2012.
Online key performance highlights for the 2013 fiscal period include:
– Internet sports betting (ParionsWeb) grew by 7.6 percent, with stakes collected up from Euro 70 million in 2012 to Euro 75.5 million in 2013.
– Close to 100,000 FDJ bettors played an average stake of less than Euro 16 per week on some 20 sports offered.
– The percentage of mobile/tablet bets on ParionsWeb virtually doubled between the end of 2012 and the end of 2013 with nearly 90,000 application downloads.
– Online lottery sales via FDJ.fr came to Euro 334 million, of which three quarters was draw-based games, up by 5.1 percent year on year compared with flat sales through the retail network.
– Recorded one million players and close to 6.5 unique visitors per month in the last quarter of 2013.
– 20 percent of online stakes are made on games that are exclusive to the channel.
Catering to the mobile trend, FDJ rolled out a number of new services and developed all new games in HTML5 compatible with any web, mobile or tablet device.
In related news, French operator ZETurf reported a 25 percent rise in stakes during 2013 amounting to Euro 1.1 Billion, and now claims a 10 percent market share in the regulated online horse racing sector.
ZETurf Managing director Emmanuel de Rohan Chabot said in a statement: “These results confirm the quality of our services and attractiveness of Zeturf games for bettors. From the beginning, our aim has always been to offer them more to improve their gaming experience. This is why we have chosen to pay out 82% of bets on average, where our competitors usually average 76%.”