Calling Players in France: Why an Old Contact List Is No Longer Enough

The campaign is ready. Former players have been selected, French-speaking agents are on shift, and the offer has been approved. One question remains: what gives the company permission to make those calls?

Since 11 August 2026, France has prohibited commercial telephone prospecting by default, with exceptions. For a team reactivating players, having a phone number in the CRM is not enough to establish permission to use it for a promotional call.

What changed in August

France’s official consumer guidance sets out two main grounds relevant to this kind of campaign: the consumer has given prior consent, or the call concerns an ongoing contract and the offer relates to its subject.

Consent must be freely given, informed and expressed through a clear positive action. The business must be able to prove that it obtained it.

The guidance also states that consent cannot last more than one year or renew automatically. Consumers can withdraw it at any time, including verbally.

For contact centers, that changes what needs checking before a list reaches the dialer. A past registration or previous conversation does not, on its own, answer whether a promotional call is permitted today.

A support callback and a bonus offer need different checks

Picture two calls to the same player. In the first, an agent returns a requested call about an unresolved account issue. In the second, the retention team offers a bonus to encourage the player to return.

Both may be described internally as “customer contact,” but the purpose matters. The August change concerns commercial prospecting. A genuine support callback should not become the label for a promotional campaign.

The ongoing-contract exception also needs assessment. An old account should not simply be treated as proof that every new offer qualifies. The relevant questions are whether there is an ongoing contract and how the proposed offer relates to it.

What your CRM needs to tell the team

Before exporting a French campaign, check what the consent record actually contains. When was it collected? Which company and type of contact did it cover? Has it expired or been withdrawn?

A checkbox marked “marketing” may leave those questions unanswered. If the evidence sits in a separate system, establish who can retrieve it before the campaign starts.

Outsourced teams need the same clarity. Sending a contractor a list of numbers does not give its agents the context behind the permission to call.

Withdrawal deserves particular attention. If a player tells an agent to stop promotional calls, that request needs to reach every relevant campaign. Updating one spreadsheet while another team keeps dialing creates an avoidable problem.

Permission does not remove the calling hours

The official guidance lists permitted prospecting hours as Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., excluding public holidays. Calls outside those periods require specific, explicit consent to the stated date and time.

Build the schedule around the recipient’s local time. A player’s consent to marketing should not be read as an invitation to call whenever the next shift is available.

These telephone rules also do not settle whether an iGaming brand or its particular promotion is permitted in France. That requires a separate assessment.

Before launching the next reactivation campaign, review the permission behind the records you plan to use. The list may still contain reachable players. The question is which of them your company has grounds to call with that offer now.