Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU), a French horse racing company, has entered the Senegal market for the first time. The company has collaborated with the Senegalese National Lottery (Lonase) to allow punters in Senegal to bet on the same horse races and with the same payouts as the PMU’s players in France. PMU has extended its partnership with Honoré Gaming which will provide the platform and sportsbook from which the players in Senegal can place their bets.
Honoré Gaming and PMU Pivot Towards Senegalese Market
Honoré Gaming, a French company founded in 2014, is an online sportsbook platform and technology provider to operators, which targets mainly French-speaking countries within the African online betting market.
PMU Partenaire, a subsidiary company of PUM France, is one of the main partners of Honoré. The latter created a Hub platform, which was especially dedicated to the PMU Bet brand for PMU Partenaire. PMU and Honoré started their partnership in 2016 and since then both companies have sought opportunities in Africa and the Caribbean region as well.
Christophe Casavova, chief operating officer at Honoré Gaming, said that Honoré was delighted with the extension of the partnership with PMU, which would ease the agreement between PMU and Lonase. This way, punters in Senegal would have the chance to place bets on the same races and with the same potential winnings as PMU’s players in France.
He also commented that Africa was one of the fastest-growing markets for online betting and gambling in the world and Honoré could help PMU enter the Senegalese market as the company helped many other operators show up in other French-speaking markets in Africa.
PMU’s Regional Footprint Expands over the Years
In 2017, PMU Partenaire entered into partnerships in the Seychelles, Madagascar, and Mauritius, and in 2018 it signed agreements in Chad and the Republic of Congo. The company planned to expand its operations to other African countries, including Mozambique, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Cameroon, and Gabon.
In April 2021, PMU extended its partnership with the Irish technology company Onionsack for another three years by signing a EUR 150 million deal ($167.25 million) in annual bets for PMU. Onionsack was considered one of the most reliable partners of the French horse racing company. In 2016 Onionsack and PMU joined forces to release the PariSMS betting platform, which significantly increased the frequency of the channel. Each month, approximately 1.5 million bets are made through the said platform.