10 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2025 FDJ UNITED’S TRANSFORMATION STORY: A GAME CHANGER Stéphane Pallez Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson of FDJ UNITED Paul Jason: We’re eager to dive into FDJ UNITED’s Play Forward 2028 strategy. But first, let’s revisit how you got here, beginning with the corporate transformation you initiated within six months of your arrival at FDJ. In 2014, you secured unanimous approval from the FDJ Board for FDJ 2020. What were the primary objectives of this five-year strategic plan, and to what extent did you achieve the goals you set in 2015? Stéphane Pallez: As you noted, the vision for Play Forward 2028 is based on the success of our previous strategic roadmap FDJ 2020. Within the first plan, we achieved our main transformation goals, built on digitalization, innovation, and diversification. Our goals have been embedded in our equity story with the IPO of FDJ in November 2019, even though the transformation had started years earlier. The story of our company is one of constant transformation, and there is never a point when you can say the work is finished. From the beginning, we recognized that digital technology would transform everything. Our customers are informed, discerning, and expect FDJ UNITED to adapt in this rapidly changing world. Digitalization became the driving force of our strategy, applied across the whole organization, even as we continued to invest in and modernize our retail network, since retailers have always been—and will remain—essential partners in our journey. We also foresaw that sports betting, especially online, would grow faster than lottery. To gain competitiveness, we invested heavily in that vertical in the French market first. Achieving these goals required a major company-wide transformation: overhauling logistics and IT systems, modernizing the sales organization, and reshaping our commercial relationships with retailers. The results speak for themselves. Online lottery grew from 3% in 2014 to 15% of our stakes today. We continued to sustain our retail lottery business by investing in customer experience and product innovation. We became more competitive in online sports betting and grew our market share. We also fundamentally transformed our IT systems to support the development of our digital operations across all of our activities. So yes, we achieved our first objectives. But transformation is a never-ending story. And then there’s COVID, which was not in anyone’s business plans in 2019. Stéphane Pallez: COVID was a difficult period for everyone, including us, but we reacted rapidly to adapt. While retail outlets stayed open, customer visits declined, but many turned to online play, and a large number of new players registered with us since we had already invested in building our digital platform. While COVID was a deeply unfortunate period, it also marked a moment of accelerated digital transformation for FDJ UNITED, as it did for many companies. Online play must have exceeded projections. Did it fall back afterward? Stéphane Pallez: Online play soared during COVID, then naturally leveled off as customers were able to return to retail. The extraordinary digital lottery growth rates of 60% in 2020 and 40% in 2021 could not continue. Today, growth is around 15%, still very dynamic, and from a much larger base of customers (6 million). What matters to reach players is to maintain many points of contact across multiple channels. Our retail network remains a powerful touchpoint and is essential to the scale of our business, to our retail business owners, and for our players to enjoy the fullness of what we have to offer. PGRI INTERVIEWS
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