What Banijay’s €32bn bet on a nonexistent iGaming market reveals

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, currently working on the Codere process, is warmer, saying interest there confirms “there remains a meaningful pool of capital willing to back attractive gaming opportunities” where there is a turnaround or consolidation story to tell. 

At the other end of the market 

The JOA deal is a snapshot of where gaming capital wants to be: large, regulated, cash-generative, omnichannel. The mirror image is the games-content mid-market, where capital conspicuously does not want to be. 

Helen Walton, co-founder of G.Games, argues the squeeze on mid-sized studios is structural: “More studios and games are launching than ever before”, yet top positions are increasingly dominated by the big five suppliers. “The inevitable result is margin squeeze.”

Add AI-enabled studios undercutting revenue-share rates and mounting certification costs, and studios are already going bust – “more will follow”, Walton warns. Nor does she expect M&A to provide the exit: “Content is not an area in which consolidation makes much sense so I doubt we’ll see many sales/ acquisitions – just straight up closures.”

Her logic is stark: “What are you acquiring? The talent? hire it. The games? Sslots are a commodity. The mechanics? Copy them. The tech? Integrating and migrating is a pain.” 

The tier one suppliers’ own results may help explain their reticence. Evolution’s FY25 revenue was flat at €2.07 billion, with CEO Martin Carlesund lamenting that in Europe “channelisation drops to 50% in some countries” as ring-fencing from unregulated markets proved costlier than expected.

Supplier buyer universe has narrowed

Playtech’s group revenue fell 10% to €763.6 million, largely reflecting its restructured Caliente Interactive agreement; the UK’s remote gaming duty hike has since prompted an operational review of its Sun Bingo business. Suppliers digesting their operators’ pains are not natural buyers of subscale studios. Playtech itself does not dispute the commoditisation argument: “Content creation alone is becoming a commodity,” a spokesperson tells iGB. “The real challenge is creating the next trend, not simply following the current one. That’s where the real Playtech advantage lies.” 

The advisers push back – up to a point. Woodward agrees that “the buyer universe has narrowed and become more selective and capability-driven than the market was previously”, with appetite focused on proprietary content, distribution synergies or regulated-market capability.

Hinchliffe insists there is still plenty of appetite for the right assets: a target “pushing out increased volumes of undifferentiated slots content into mature markets” will struggle, but a unique jackpot mechanic, a differentiated live offering or access to newly regulated markets will always find interest. The blockage, he says, is valuation”, sellers want to be paid now for what the business might deliver in two to three years”, while buyers demand more certainty; earn-outs and put/call structures are bridging some gaps.

Tirabassi is the most constructive of the three, arguing “buyers have become far more selective and disciplined” rather than absent, and that “the most likely endgame for viable businesses is integration into larger platforms that can provide greater scale, distribution and commercial reach”. It is a consolidation wave he expects to extend across the wider B2B ecosystem, including adtech. 

Where the money goes next 

Put the two halves together and the map of value in gaming M&A draws itself. Woodward expects “a continuation of value concentrating on assets that combine regulation, scale, distribution and customer ownership”, with deal flow clustering in operators and platform-level assets rather than standalone content suppliers – and, for weaker businesses, a growing share of activity taking the form of distressed sales or recapitalisations.

Hinchliffe adds a catalyst: “It’s highly likely that some of the recently announced large take private transactions will prove to be a catalyst for further M&A,” since “these businesses will be viewed very differently under private ownership”. Tirabassi sees three themes over the next 12-18 months – regulated omnichannel operators, efficiency-driving technology assets and selective supplier consolidation – noting that “deal activity remains very robust across virtually all segments of the gaming industry”. 

A harsh shakeout

Walton, for her part, does not dispute that the shakeout is harsh; but she disputes that it is avoidable. “The industry has been artificially buoyed by new markets and heavier spend rather than natural or organic growth,” she concedes, although there is “nothing like a burning platform to stimulate creativity”. Walton predicts a polarised future of ultra-cheap AI-produced content and in-house studios at one end, mega-suppliers at the other and a thin band of genuine innovators in between. 

Which brings us back to 33 provincial French casinos. Banijay has, in effect, paid for a business that works today and a lottery ticket on a market that may never be drawn. But as Hinchliffe observes, the asymmetry is the point: the downside is a cash-generative locals’ leisure business; the upside is pole position in what could be Europe’s largest untapped iGaming market. In a sector where mid-market sellers struggle to find buyers at the prices they want, that is where gaming’s new value map points. 

Banijay had not responded to iGB’s request for further comment at the time of publication.