How do you build an omnichannel gambling business in a country that bans half the channels? Banijay´s answer arrived on 6 July. The French media group that owns Betclic and last year swallowed Tipico, has agreed to acquire Groupe JOA’s network of 33 regional casinos across France through its gaming arm. Completion is expected in the second half of this year pending regulatory approvals. Both sides talk enthusiastically of the “omnichannel opportunity”.
Yet France has no legal online casino, and H2 Gambling Capital data shows the amount staked on retail betting slipped slightly to €10.5 billion in 2025 from €11 billion the year before. So what, precisely, is Banijay paying for?
The answer, according to the industry analysts and deal advisors iGB has spoken to, is threefold: a resilient land-based cash machine today; a cheaper customer tomorrow; and a head start in what may be the biggest unregulated online casino market in Europe.
Underwriting an iGaming market that doesn’t exist
Starting with the upside. Ollie Woodward, deal advisory director at BDO, specialising in due diligence for the betting and gaming sector, says the deal’s valuation is “likely a balance of the two but undoubtedly there is long-term punt here on the potential for iCasino becoming regulated in France”. The omnichannel opportunity, he adds, is clear enough on its own terms, creating a customer ecosystem spanning online sports betting, gaming, retail gaming and hospitality.
Nigel Hinchliffe, managing director at Alvarez & Marsal’s transaction advisory group, puts it more directly: “It’s difficult to argue that the deal has to stand up based on land-based fundamentals alone or it would have happened long before now,” he says.
For him, Banijay is taking a calculated risk where “the upside of online casino liberalisation is significant while the downside is more limited”, with JOA continuing to “throw off cash to invest in Banijay’s higher growth European online operations” in the meantime. Should iGaming eventually be regulated in France, he expects the tax burden to be punitive – precisely when a full omnichannel offering, and the lower customer-acquisition costs it enables, becomes a key differentiator.
And should future online licences be attached to land-based operations, the transaction could come to look like “a very astute piece of dealmaking”.
That licensing model is not a fantasy of Banijay’s making. JOA’s chairman Laurent Lassiaz – who will stay on to run the business – told iGB in June that iGaming is no threat to France’s land-based sector, but that licences tethered to casino operations would be “a huge new vertical for us”. “I’m the defender of the evolution from brick-and-mortar to click-and-mortar,” he said. JOA’s position, in other words, is not to block iGaming forever, but to own the keys when the door opens.
A broader European pattern
Christian Tirabassi, senior partner at Ficom Leisure, situates the deal within a broader European pattern. “The broader industry trend is the convergence of products and channels,” he says. The modern operator increasingly needs every product regulation permits, delivered through every relevant channel. Even with online casino prohibited, he argues, combining a strong digital operation with a leading land-based network improves customer acquisition, loyalty, CRM and data use – and, as marketing rules tighten, “having a physical footprint can become an increasingly valuable competitive advantage for online operators”.
As for iGaming liberalisation, Tirabassi is careful, noting any transaction should be underwritten without relying on regulatory change, and a future opening of the market is “a meaningful value creation opportunity rather than the core investment rationale”. But it is “widely recognised that a substantial portion of French online casino demand is currently being satisfied through offshore operators”. The black market is estimated at some €1.5 billion annually.
The most French of markets
What Banijay is buying in the meantime is a rather sturdy asset. France sustains just over 200 casinos – a legacy of licensing rules that originate in Napoleon’s decision to permit casinos only in specific locations under strict criteria. H2 data put casino turnover at €32.2 billion in 2025, with sector GGR around €2.8 billion, of which slots account for 75%-82%.
Crucially, it is a locals’ market. The average visit costs €80 and that makes it resilient when the economy turns: local leisure is the last spending people give up. “For the French population, the casino is a local leisure destination,” Lassiaz told iGB.
It is also politically embedded. French casinos pay a GGR tax to their host cities, in some cases funding up to half of municipal expenses – one reason, Lassiaz observed, that “everybody is super-scared of breaking the toy” when online regulation is raised. That cuts both ways: it makes near-term liberalisation unlikely, but it means that if licences ever come, an incumbent with 33 casinos and deep local roots will be first in the queue.
Banijay CEO François Riahi, whose Tipico acquisition is set to make the group the fourth-largest sports betting and gaming operator in Europe once the German business is merged, framed JOA as a repeat of the German and Austrian playbook, saying the group would become “a leader in land-based gaming in another of our core countries: France”.
What is PE’s role in the Banijay/JOA deal?
One detail is less clear than it seems: the part played by Blackstone and Kings Park Capital, whose funds Banijay’s announcement describes as supporting the transaction. Both have been long-standing investors in JOA, and the advisers iGB spoke to read their role rather differently.
As Woodward puts it: “they can actually be viewed as the sellers here” – a private equity exit rather than a fresh institutional bet on French casinos, although Banijay had not clarified the funds’ position at the time of writing.
Woodward describes private equity appetite for European land-based gaming as “selective”, citing specific opportunities for scaled regional operators with strong cash flow, rather than a sentiment shift.
Tirabassi, წყარო: igamingbusiness.com →