The city of Lille always wins at the casino (illustration).

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R.Ben-Ari / Chameleons Eye / Newscom / SIPA

  • The Court of Auditors devotes a chapter of its last report to casinos in times of health crisis.

  • The various confinements have brought down their revenues and with them, the fees collected by the municipalities.

  • The Court of Auditors nevertheless welcomes the management of the contract between the city of Lille and the Barrière group, operator of the Lille casino.

Here we win every time.

In its public report, published in mid-March, the Court of Auditors (CDC) devotes an entire chapter to municipalities with a casino on their territory.

If the authority notes a general drop in pensions linked to the coronavirus epidemic, it also highlights the good practices that allow certain cities to do better.

And in this area, Lille is set up as an example to follow.

Overall, in its report, the Court of Auditors deplores a certain passivity of the majority of municipalities in the management of the delegation of public service operating casinos.

According to the CDC, these municipalities are content with what falls without risk in their coffers without seeking to optimize this rent.

Worse, some cities with a casino have found themselves dependent on the levy on gross gaming revenue to build their budgets.

Suddenly, with the health crisis and the closure of casinos, revenues have fallen for the cities.

For example, as of December 31, 2020, Le Touquet had seen its levy on gaming proceeds fall by nearly 50% compared to 2019.

A casino operated "at the risk and peril" of the delegatee

For the CDC, Lille is doing quite well to such an extent that the authority makes it "an example of good practice to be developed".

First, because the levy on the product of games represents "only" 1.5% of the municipal budget against, for example, 18% for Saint-Amand-les-Eaux.

And Lille does not rely only on this levy to draw direct resources from the casino.

Indeed, the "public domain occupancy fee for the municipality is equivalent, in 2018, to 41% of the revenues generated by the casino", underlines the CDC.

The authority also welcomes the fact that the operation of the casino is really done “at the risk and peril” of the delegatee, the Barrière group.

Our Casino file

To illustrate its point, the Court of Auditors explains that in 2018, Lille had received 5.7 million euros in the proceeds of games, 1.1 million in contribution to cultural development and a fee for occupying the public domain.

All this despite nearly 100 million euros in losses accumulated by the casino since its opening in 2006. A satisfaction that made Patrick Partouche jump, chairman of the supervisory board of the Partouche group which operates, in particular, the casino of Saint- Amand-les-Eaux: “Congratulations to Lille?

97 million euros of losses for the casino of Lille… This is how we are treated !!!

He choked on Twitter.

Note that the Barrière group, operator of the Lille casino, deplored a gross gaming revenue down 27% over one year in 2020. Moreover, according to the Force Ouvrière (FO) union, the casino operator has planned to lay off approximately 70 employees in 2021.

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