Honoré Gaming's Casanova: Europe Builds for the Exception, Not the Rule

European platform providers have spent a decade failing in francophone Africa. Christophe Casanova, the former derivatives trader who runs the French platform that did not, says they arrive with the wrong mental model, and concedes that the unlicensed operators his clients compete against hold advantages no product can answer.

• Honoré Gaming chief executive Christophe Casanova says European platform providers fail in francophone Africa because they build for the smartphone, mobile data and individual account, when the base case is a feature phone, intermittent connectivity and cash held in hand
• He describes USSD betting and offline mobile point of sale not as workarounds but as the product, and says the agent network, not the app store, is the acquisition channel in markets such as Brazzaville
• Casanova concedes that unlicensed operators compete on better odds, lower margins and no tax pass-through, and that these are real disadvantages for his licensed clients rather than something the industry should pretend away
• On anti-money laundering in cash-heavy retail, he argues the problem belongs to the platform rather than the operator, and describes tiered onboarding by bet size and platform-level transaction monitoring
• He expects the commercial relevance of French identity in African gaming to keep diminishing as more African-led platforms emerge, and says Honoré is preparing for that world rather than resisting it

The French Platform That Did Not Fail in Francophone Africa

The pattern is familiar enough to have become a rule. A European supplier signs an African operator, translates the interface into French or Portuguese, ships a catalogue built for Western margins, and quietly withdraws two years later having learned that the market did not behave as the deck said it would. The graveyard is crowded, and it is not short of well-capitalised names.

Honoré Gaming is the counter-example, and an awkward one, because it is French. Founded in 2013 and run from 352 rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, the address that gives it its name, the company began by compiling odds on sporting events and now supplies a turnkey retail and online platform to operators in francophone Africa and Central America. It has been a partner of France's PMU since 2016, and builds for PMU Partenaire, the state betting monopoly's emerging-markets subsidiary. In 2022 that relationship carried PMU's pari-mutuel pools into Senegal through the national lottery, Lonase.

The company is run by two brothers. Christophe Casanova, who spent his early career trading equity derivatives at Société Générale and JP Morgan before moving into quantitative football modelling, co-founded Honoré with his brother Cyril and became chief executive two years ago, having first been chief product officer and then chief operating officer. In October 2025 the pair restructured the capital of the wider Sharp Vision and Honoré Gaming group with €50 million of backing from AgilaCapital, a transaction that increased the founders' and senior management's ownership rather than diluting it. The group said at the time that it had recorded 70% annual profitable growth in recurring revenues, expected to pass €50 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025, and employed around 100 people in Paris.

That combination, a founder-controlled French supplier that has just bought more of itself, gives Casanova room to be blunter than most platform chief executives can afford to be. He is blunt in both directions. He is scathing about how European providers approach the continent, and he is unusually candid about the disadvantages his own licensed clients carry against operators who do not pay tax and do not observe advertising limits.

We put 12 questions to Casanova, on the trading desk, distribution, the PMU relationship, the black market, French heritage, horse racing, anti-money laundering in cash economies, Central America, mobile money economics, consolidation and where he wants the company to be in five years. His answers are reproduced in full below, edited only for spelling and punctuation.

On What a Trading Desk Does Not Teach You

You came from equity derivatives trading at Société Générale and JP Morgan, then quantitative football modelling, before founding Honoré. Most platform CEOs in iGaming come from operator or supplier backgrounds. What did you bring from a derivatives desk into building Honoré that an industry-bred founder would not have, and what did you have to learn the hard way?

Before founding Honoré Gaming with my brother, we launched a few unsuccessful ventures in the iGaming industry. Even while facing those challenges, we knew we were in the right sector. I initially started as a CPO before moving into COO and eventually CEO. It was a long journey before I stepped into the CEO role two years ago. Despite being very different professions, derivatives traders and CEOs in the iGaming sector share a similar sense of responsibility.

What lessons were the hardest? Distribution. In a trading room, there is no need to chase customers. In B2B iGaming, especially in emerging markets, the sales cycle is long, relationship-driven and deeply political. I underestimated how much trust matters in francophone Africa, not trust in your product, but trust in you personally, in your word and in your willingness to show up. That took time and a few expensive lessons.

On Why European Platforms Keep Failing

Honoré has built distinctively for Africa: USSD betting, mobile POS without internet or electricity, deep cash handling, retail integration with airtime and mobile money. European platform providers have tried and largely failed in these markets. What do they fundamentally not understand about how betting actually works in francophone Africa, and why have they not adapted?

They build for the exception and miss the rule. The mental model of a European platform team is: smartphone, mobile data, digital payment, individual account. In francophone Africa, the base case is almost the opposite: feature phone or entry-level Android, intermittent connectivity, cash in hand, and betting as a social activity that often happens through an agent or a retail point. USSD isn't a workaround for us; it's primary. Mobile POS that works offline isn't a feature, it's the product.

The deeper failure is cultural and commercial, not technical. European providers arrive with a standardised catalogue, a pricing model built for Western margins, and a localisation strategy that amounts to translating the UI into French. They don't understand that in Brazzaville, the agent network is the acquisition channel. They don't understand how mobile money actually flows in these markets, how airtime top-up is deeply embedded in how people manage small balances, or how trust in a brand gets built through physical presence. They've tried to apply a digital-first playbook to a market that is mobile-first but cash-led, and it doesn't land.

There is an honest conversation to be had about French heritage in francophone Africa: some clients see French expertise as an asset, others see colonial baggage. Do you find your French identity an advantage commercially in 2026, or is it something you have had to actively manage?

It's genuinely both, and you have to be honest about that. There are markets and relationships where French expertise, PMU heritage, pari-mutuel technical credibility, and linguistic fluency opens doors. Senior figures in African gaming regulation or state lottery structures often have French professional networks and reference points. That helps.

But you'd have to be naive to ignore the baggage. There are client conversations where I've sensed that "French platform" carries an implicit assumption about how we view the relationship, as a service provider looking down, rather than a genuine partner. We've addressed that by being deliberate about local hires, local partnerships, and structuring deals where the African operator has genuine autonomy over their product. We don't parachute in French expertise and extract value. That's not the model.

Ultimately, I think the commercial relevance of French identity will continue to diminish as the market matures and more African-led platforms emerge. We're preparing for that world, not resisting it.

On the PMU Relationship and the Horse Racing Stack

The PMU partnership through PMU Partenaire is a significant endorsement. Realistically, how much of Honoré's business today is still tied to that relationship, and what does the company look like commercially without it?

PMU was transformational for us in terms of credibility and in giving us access to pari-mutuel infrastructure that would have taken years to build independently. I won't pretend otherwise. But the honest answer to your question is that we've been deliberate about building commercial diversification, precisely because over-concentration in any single relationship is an existential risk for a B2B platform.

Today, PMU represents a limited share of our total revenue as sports betting, casino and other verticals have grown. We are proud to call PMU a partner and grateful for our relationship.

Pari-mutuel horse racing remains a meaningful part of your stack, with real depth in tote technology. Outside legacy strongholds, is horse racing actually growing as a betting product, or is the company increasingly running it because the existing customer base demands it?

Pari-mutuel horse racing has deep roots in certain francophone markets, that's a structural fact, and it's driven by the PMU heritage and the retail networks that were built around it. For those existing customer bases, the demand is stable and the product still generates real handle.

But I would not characterise horse racing as a growth engine for new customer acquisition in most of our markets. The younger bettor is coming to us for AFCON qualifiers and European leagues. We maintain and develop the horse racing stack because it serves a valuable and loyal customer segment, because the pari-mutuel expertise is genuinely differentiated, and because it remains relevant for certain institutional relationships. We're not growing it for its own sake.

On the Black Market and the Cost of Being Licensed

Africa's black market is dominated by 1xBet, Sportybet and a long tail of grey or unlicensed operators. Honoré states it works only with regulated operators. In practice, what does that look like in markets where licensing regimes are inconsistent or contested, and how do your licensed clients honestly compete with operators that simply do not pay tax?

Let's be clear about what the unlicensed operators are doing: they're competing on price, better odds, lower margins, no tax pass-through and on availability, because they're not constrained by licensing conditions around what markets they can offer or how they can advertise. For a licensed operator, those are real competitive disadvantages, and I don't think it serves anyone well by pretending otherwise.

What our clients can compete on is trust and infrastructure. Mobile money reconciliation that actually works, winnings that get paid, agents that don't disappear with your cash, these matter to customers who've been burned before. There are also segments of the market, particularly institutional bettors and higher-value customers, who genuinely value operating with a regulated entity.

Our position as a platform is clear: we work with licensed operators, full stop. In markets where licensing regimes are contested or slow-moving, we require our clients to demonstrate they are either licensed or actively in a formal licensing process with the relevant authority. We don't get into grey. The reputational and legal exposure isn't worth it, and it's not the business we want to build.

On Cash, KYC and Where the Risk Sits

Cash-heavy environments and POS-led models bring AML and player protection challenges that do not exist in fully digital markets: onboarding without robust digital ID, betting without traceable payment trails, regulators asking harder questions. How is Honoré's platform actively addressing those concerns rather than passing the risk to the operator?

This is a real problem within the market and there's no point pretending it can be solved with a simple technical fix. Cash-heavy retail environments with limited digital ID infrastructure create genuine KYC and AML challenges. Our stance on the issue is that these challenges are the platform's problem to help solve, not to outsource entirely to the operator.

Practically, what we've built includes tiered onboarding based on bet size and frequency; a customer placing small recreational bets through an agent doesn't need the same verification pathway as someone staking regularly at higher volumes. We've built transaction monitoring at the platform level that flags unusual patterns for operator review, even in cash environments. We're working with partners on biometric agent verification in markets where national ID registries are accessible digitally.

Regulators in our markets are asking harder questions and that's entirely legitimate. Where I push back is on frameworks that import European digital-first KYC requirements wholesale into markets where the infrastructure doesn't exist. The right approach is risk-proportionate, not checkbox compliance.

Mobile money is well ahead in Africa compared with European payments, but processor fees and fraud rates are equally outsized. Where is the line between embracing mobile money for accessibility and protecting operator margins from being eroded by transaction costs and chargeback risk?

The economics are genuinely uncomfortable. Mobile money transaction fees in West Africa can run meaningfully higher than card interchange in Europe, and fraud risk is real, particularly on withdrawals. Operators who've gone aggressive on mobile money without building the right controls have had painful experiences.

Our belief: mobile money is non-negotiable for accessibility and must be supported. You cannot serve this market without it. But operators need to be pricing that cost of funds into their margin model from day one, not discovering it after launch. We help clients model the full payment cost stack during implementation, including expected fraud rates by market, so there are no surprises.

On the fraud side, velocity controls, device fingerprinting, and agent-level behavioural monitoring are all part of what we provide. It doesn't eliminate the problem but it narrows it to manageable levels.

On Central America

Central America is part of your footprint. Most of those markets are either lightly regulated or unregulated. What is the realistic commercial footprint today across Honduras, Guatemala, Panama and Costa Rica, and how does the playbook differ from your African approach?

Central America is a different thesis from Africa. The markets are smaller, regulatory maturity varies significantly, Costa Rica is effectively an offshore licensing jurisdiction, Panama has a functioning domestic framework, Honduras and Guatemala are evolving. What we've found is that Central American countries have specific habits which differ from the rest of Latam.

The playbook differs from Africa in a few important ways: internet connectivity is better so the USSD and offline-first architecture is less crucial; the competitive landscape includes North American operators in a way that doesn't apply in francophone Africa; and the cash handling norms, while still significant, are less extreme. We treat Central America as a complementary footprint, selective client relationships where our specific tech adds value, rather than a primary growth theatre.

On National Lotteries and the Procurement Problem

National lotteries across Africa are large and increasingly looking at digital modernisation. From your seat, are these state operators actually ready to move, or are RFP processes generating more activity than real commitments? What does a meaningful commercial path with an African national lottery actually look like today?

Both, and often it's the same institution at different moments. The appetite for digital modernisation is genuine as lottery revenues have been under pressure from unregulated sports betting, and governments understand that the current status quo is losing them money. That creates real motivation to move.

The problem is the gap between political will and institutional capacity to execute. Procurement processes for state operators in our markets are slow, often opaque, and subject to political interference at multiple points. We've been involved in processes that were genuinely serious and stalled for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of proposals.

What a meaningful commercial path looks like today: direct relationships at the level of the institution's leadership, willingness to structure deals that include technology transfer and local capacity building (which matters to governments for political reasons), and patience for a 12 to 24 month sales cycle. The clients who've succeeded have treated it as a long game, not an RFP response.

On Consolidation and the Next Five Years

Honoré has been competitive against larger platforms partly by building features the big providers consider too niche. The risk of that strategy is being either acquired or out-resourced once those features stop being niche. How do you intend to stay relevant for the next decade in a consolidating B2B market?

The acquisition risk is real and I don't dismiss it. Building features that the majors consider too niche has served us well, but you're right that the niche eventually either becomes mainstream, at which point the big platforms build it, or it doesn't grow enough to matter. Neither is a great outcome if that's your entire strategy.

What I think about is compounding advantages that are structurally harder to replicate than features. The agent network integrations, the cash reconciliation architecture, the USSD stack, these aren't features a large platform can bolt on. They require years of operational learning in specific markets. The regulatory relationships we have in francophone Africa aren't replicable through an acquisition, they're built person by person over time. Our bet is that the combination of that embedded knowledge with continuous product investment creates a moat that is genuinely defensible even if individual features get commoditised.

We're also thinking carefully about where to consolidate ourselves, selective geographic depth rather than spreading thin trying to match the global platforms everywhere.

Five years out, where do you want Honoré to be: a focused emerging markets specialist with deep francophone Africa concentration, or a broader player competing across geographies with the SBTechs and Kambis of the world?

I'd like Honoré to be known as a focused specialist with deepening expertise, not a global platform trying to compete with Kambi on their terms. I think the emerging markets specialist position is genuinely valuable and increasingly so as more capital flows into African and Latin American gaming, there will be more demand for a platform that actually understands these markets rather than applying a European template with a translation layer.

It means being the platform that is most deeply embedded in the markets we operate in, with the broadest product capability across the specific verticals sports, horse racing, lottery that matter in those markets. If we execute this strategy over the next five years, we'll be the natural partner for the next wave of African operators and state entities who want a platform that was built for their reality.

The Distribution Lesson Is the Whole Argument, Not an Aside

Casanova buries his most important answer in the first question. Asked what a derivatives desk gave him, he says what it took away: in a trading room there is no need to chase customers, and the hardest thing he had to learn was distribution. Everything else in the interview is a consequence of that. USSD as primary rather than fallback, offline point of sale as the product, the agent network as the acquisition channel, the insistence that trust in francophone Africa attaches to a person rather than a product, all of it is a distribution argument dressed as a technology argument. It is also, conveniently, his answer to the acquisition question, and the two answers have to be read together. When he says the agent integrations, the cash reconciliation architecture and the regulatory relationships are not things a large platform can bolt on, he is claiming that his moat is distribution rather than code, because code is exactly what a well-capitalised rival can buy. The claim is plausible, and the October 2025 recapitalisation, in which he and his brother increased their stake rather than selling down, suggests they believe it with their own money. Whether it holds depends on something he cannot control, which is how long it takes a competitor to decide that ten years of agent relationships are worth acquiring outright.

He Concedes the Licensed Operator's Problem Has No Product Answer

The most striking passage is the one where Casanova refuses to spin. Unlicensed operators, he says, compete on better odds, lower margins, no tax pass-through and unconstrained availability, and those are real competitive disadvantages for his clients. That is a supplier publicly conceding that his customers are structurally worse off than their untaxed rivals, which almost no platform chief executive says out loud. What he offers against it is trust and infrastructure: mobile money reconciliation that works, winnings that get paid, agents who do not vanish with the float. Those are genuine advantages and they are also thin, because they only matter to a customer who has already been burned once. The recent record in the region is not encouraging on this point. betPawa's exit from Senegal, which the operator blamed on high taxes and a payment monopoly, is what happens when a licensed operator concludes the maths does not work regardless of how good the platform underneath it is. Casanova's honesty here is admirable and it is also a warning to regulators: a licensing regime that taxes the compliant while doing nothing about the unlicensed is not a regime, it is a handicap.

Owning the KYC Problem Is a Commercial Bet as Much as an Ethical One

The line that regulators should read twice is that anti-money laundering in cash-heavy retail is "the platform's problem to help solve, not to outsource entirely to the operator". Most suppliers take the opposite position, because the licence sits with the operator and so, contractually, does the liability. Casanova's tiered onboarding by bet size and frequency, platform-level transaction monitoring that runs even in cash environments, and biometric agent verification where national ID registries are digitally accessible, describe a supplier deliberately absorbing risk that it could have pushed downstream. There is commercial logic in that. A platform that has already built proportionate controls is the one a state lottery or a newly licensing regulator can appoint without a fight, and his answer on lottery procurement, where he stresses technology transfer and 12 to 24 month sales cycles, shows he knows exactly which door this opens. His pushback is narrower than it first appears: he is not arguing against verification, he is arguing against importing European digital-first thresholds into markets without the identity infrastructure to satisfy them. That is a reasonable position, and it is one regulators across the continent will have to rule on explicitly rather than by default, because a risk-proportionate framework that is never written down becomes an excuse rather than a standard.

The Most Interesting Thing He Says Is That His Own Advantage Is Expiring

Asked whether French identity is an asset or colonial baggage, Casanova answers that it is both, then goes further than the question required. The commercial relevance of French identity, he says, will keep diminishing as more African-led platforms emerge, and Honoré is preparing for that world rather than resisting it. A chief executive volunteering that his firm's distinguishing characteristic has a shelf life is not a normal interview answer, and it is consistent with the rest of his position rather than at odds with it. If the moat is agent networks, cash reconciliation and regulatory relationships built person by person, then the passport on the founder's desk was never the asset; the years of showing up were. It also sets a test that can be marked. Local hires, local partnerships and deals where the African operator holds genuine product autonomy are all observable, and so is their absence.

Casanova's account of why European platforms fail in Africa is convincing precisely because it is not really about technology, and the same logic points at his own company. The question for the next five years is not whether Honoré can keep building things the majors think are too niche, but whether a Paris-run business can stay the most embedded partner in markets that are steadily growing their own.