France's competition authority has cleared Banijay Gaming's acquisition of exclusive control of JOA without conditions. The decision removes a central merger-control condition from a deal that joins Betclic's online gambling business with a network of 33 French casinos.
The transaction was notified on October 7 and approved on November 4. The Autorite de la concurrence said its review was the first in France to examine a combination creating an operator active in both online gambling and land-based casinos.
JOA's casino operations generate most of its revenue, with restaurants, bars and hotels attached to some of its properties. Banijay Gaming operates online sports betting, poker and other gambling products in France through Betclic. G3 Newswire reported that the authority found no horizontal overlap because the buyer's wider Lov Group is not active in the French casino market.
The regulator separately considered whether a future French online-casino market should affect its analysis. It concluded that legalisation remained too hypothetical to qualify as a sufficiently plausible scenario, although it recognised a relationship between online poker and casino table games because their player bases can overlap.
Banijay Group announced the planned acquisition in July as part of an omnichannel strategy. It said the transaction would give Banijay Gaming full ownership of JOA and combine its digital operations with the casino group's physical leisure network. Other casino regulatory approvals and closing conditions remain distinct from the competition authority's unconditional merger clearance.
