ANJ Replicates Award-Winning Safer Gambling Campaign as The French Open Approaches

As The French Open, also known as Roland Garros, approaches, L’Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) launched a new program to raise awareness of the risks associated with sports betting.

Two Lines at the Bottom of an Ad Will Never Be Enough

The ANJ’s program is called Derrière les Mentions (Behind the Labels) and seeks to “breathe life” into the legal mentions present in gambling ads.

Behind the Labels reflects the ANJ’s strategic plan to reduce harmful gambling in France over three years. Originally launched in June 2024, just in the for the UEFA EURO, the campaign sought to tackle riskier gambling and encourage French citizens to play responsibly.

To that end, the ANJ sought to breathe life into the legal notices appearing on gambling ads. Since the ANJ acknowledged that few people take heed of or even notice these labels, it made them take the center of the ad and tell a true addiction-related story.

The campaign’s slogan states that “Two lines at the bottom of an ad will never be enough to tell the story of the spiral into sports betting addiction.”

The campaign previously won the GOLD award in the Campagne de Publicité Print at the Grand Prix Stratégies du Sport et de l’eSport 2024. Now it will be expanded to tennis, allowing the ANJ to protect even more consumers.

The promotional messages will link to the Evalujeu website, which, as its name suggests, allows players to evaluate their gameplay and learn whether their gambling habits are healthy. The Evalujeu website also contains important player safety information, allowing players to familiarize themselves with the support services available to them.

ANJ Seeks to Reduce France’s Problem Gambling Levels

The launch of the new campaign comes as the OFTD, France’s national agency for the prevention of addiction, counted approximately 1,170,000 problem gamblers in 2024 alone. Of those, 360,000 were described as excessive gamblers. This suggests that the problem gambling rate among sports bettors stands at 5.9%.

In response to these findings, the ANJ recently urged operators to raise their standards and bolster their efforts to identify excessive players. The regulator was very concerned by the fact that the OFTD reported that problem gamblers were responsible for a staggering 38.3% of all GGR in France.

The ANJ emphasized that reducing the harmful gambling taking place in France should be operators’ top priority.

In the meantime, France faces continuous pressure from the offshore online casino market, which has further complicated the issue.