French lawmakers have advanced amendments to the Professional Sports Bill that would require licensed sportsbooks to apply mandatory loss limits on bettors aged 18 to 25, marking one of the most significant gambling reforms under discussion in French politics this year.
The move lands just months before the 2026 FIFA World Cup, an event expected to drive a fresh surge in sports betting activity across Europe, and signals a shift away from general responsible gambling messaging toward direct financial intervention in how young adults bet.
Under the proposed changes, sportsbooks would be legally required to cap how much money younger customers can lose, rather than simply limiting stakes or bet sizes. The exact loss threshold has not been set. Instead, the French government would define the cap through secondary legislation, in consultation with the country's gambling regulator, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux.
The gambling provisions sit within a broader bill aimed at reforming oversight of French professional sport, including league governance, financial supervision of clubs, and protections for sports media rights.
Support for the measure has been building for months, driven partly by ANJ data showing that roughly two-thirds of French adults under 25 have placed a sports bet. That figure helped push the issue up the legislative agenda ahead of the World Cup.
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who led the ANJ for five years before stepping down recently, had backed the proposal before leaving office. She has since been succeeded by Pascal Chèvremont, who now inherits an agenda that includes advertising restrictions, broader consumer protection standards, and ongoing discussions about whether France should open a regulated online casino market.
The question of how regulators should protect younger bettors is not unique to France. As covered in AI and Responsible Gambling: A 2026 Compliance Analysis, regulators across Europe are moving away from accepting reactive systems and demanding proactive, real-time harm detection as a baseline requirement for licensed operators.
If enacted, France's approach would place it among a small group of European countries using age-specific financial controls in gambling. The Netherlands already enforces mandatory loss limits for younger adults, while Norway restricts spending through its state-owned operator, Norsk Tipping. The UK has taken a narrower route, capping stakes on online slots for players aged 18 to 24, though that rule applies only to that single product category.
By targeting overall losses rather than just stakes, France's proposed framework would go further than the UK's model and could become one of the more restrictive gambling regimes in the region. The broader pattern of European regulators tightening enforcement is also visible in the Dutch Gambling Association's lawsuit against Meta, where the question of who is responsible for protecting players from harm is being tested simultaneously in courts and legislatures.
The bill's gambling provisions have drawn most of the public attention, but they sit alongside a push to tackle audiovisual piracy. Industry groups say unauthorised streaming has become deeply embedded in how French fans watch football. Estimates suggest a majority of France's roughly 9.9 million football supporters have streamed matches through unauthorised platforms, with around one in five Ligue 1 followers watching games without a subscription.
Backers of the bill argue that stronger piracy enforcement is necessary to protect the value of domestic media rights deals that clubs and leagues increasingly depend on financially.
The loss-limit threshold will only be finalised once the ANJ is formally consulted, meaning operators will not know the practical impact until secondary legislation is drafted. With new ANJ leadership now in place and the World Cup approaching, the coming months are likely to bring further clarity on how strict France's youth betting controls will ultimately be, and whether other European regulators follow its lead.
La publicité pour les paris sportifs restreinte 📱 L’Assemblée nationale a voté le texte sur la réforme du sport professionnel. Parmi les mesures phares, un meilleur encadrement des paris sportifs, avec l’interdiction de leur publicité pendant les retransmissions de compétitions
