Champagne and Monte Carlo: A Love Story That Never Ended

There is a photograph from 1895 that sums up an entire era. A dozen men in top hats sit around a roulette table at the Casino de Monte-Carlo. Each has a glass of Champagne beside them. No one is looking at the camera. Everyone is looking at the wheel.

That image was not an accident. It was the result of a very deliberate strategy.

The Man Who Invented Modern Hospitality

François Blanc arrived in Monaco in 1863 with a vision that seemed absurd at the time. The principality was bankrupt. The existing casino was failing. Blanc, who had already built a fortune running the spa and casino at Bad Homburg in Germany, saw something no one else did.

He understood that people did not come to gamble. They came to feel like they belonged somewhere extraordinary.

Blanc’s first move was to buy every bottle of Champagne he could find. He struck deals with Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot, taking entire harvests off their hands. The Champagne was not sold. It was given away. Free. To anyone who walked through the doors.

The results were immediate:

• Visitor numbers tripled within two years
• Monaco’s tax revenues funded the construction of the Monte Carlo Opera House
• The Grimaldi family, on the brink of losing their throne, became one of Europe’s richest dynasties
• Every casino built after 1870 copied the formula

Blanc’s insight was simple: remove friction. If guests never had to reach for their wallets for a drink, they stayed longer, played longer, and the house won in the long run. Champagne was not a luxury. It was infrastructure.

Monte Carlo’s Champagne Numbers

The tradition did not fade. These days, the Casino de Monte-Carlo still shifts more Champagne per square metre than any venue in Europe. In 2023, Société des Bains de Mer, which runs the casino, reported €4.2 million in Champagne purchases — just on the gaming floors. The hotels and restaurants are separate.

What they pour:

• Louis Roederer Cristal accounts for nearly 40 per cent of casino floor sales
• Dom Pérignon is the second most poured, favoured by high rollers in the private salons
• A 2016 survey of VIP guests found that 82 per cent associated Champagne with “winning moments” more than any other drink

The Café de Paris, directly across from the casino entrance, sold 42,000 bottles in 2023. Their sommelier, Jean-Paul Lefèvre, told a French wine magazine last year that “the sound of a cork popping is the second most common sound in the room after the roulette ball.”

Where the Ritual Lives Now

The logic Blanc perfected in 1863—remove friction, create comfort, keep the guest present—did not disappear when casinos moved online. It just adapted.

In the digital space, online pokies operators face the same challenge Blanc did: how to make the experience so seamless that nothing interrupts the moment. The answer has been payment infrastructure.

PayID pokies Australia platforms now dominate the local market because they stripped away the waiting that used to kill momentum. For pokies online PayID operators, the transaction disappears into the background, exactly the way Blanc wanted the Champagne service to disappear.

Online pokies with PayID have become the default because they solve the oldest problem in gaming: keeping the player in the flow.

When the Tradition Crossed the Channel

Australia never had Monte Carlo, but the connection between Champagne and gaming arrived early. The first licensed casinos in Tasmania back in the 1970s brought in European-trained managers who carried over the full hospitality playbook. At Wrest Point in Hobart, the 1973 wine list had Moët & Chandon Brut Impérial priced at $18 a bottle — about $140 in today’s terms once adjusted for inflation.

Crown Casino in Melbourne took it further:

• In 2022, Crown’s premium gaming floor introduced a dedicated champagne bar with 47 references
• Sébastien Crowley, formerly of The Fat Duck in the UK, was brought in to shape the list.
• The top seller in 2023 was Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill 2013, going for $950.

In Sydney, The Star moved 1,800 bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal across the first three quarters of 2024. A spokesperson told the Australian Financial Review that “Champagne remains the most ordered beverage in the high roller suites, unchanged for forty years.”

What Survives

The Casino de Monte-Carlo still has chandeliers that cost more than most houses. Crown still flies in vintage bottles for its private clients. But the principle that started it all—make the guest feel like nothing is being asked of them—now lives in interfaces as much as in crystal.

François Blanc would probably laugh at a phone screen. But he would recognise the logic immediately. Take away the friction. Keep them comfortable. Let them stay as long as they want.

Some things do not change. The cork still pops. The wheel still spins. And somewhere, someone is pouring something cold while the next hand is dealt.