French internet providers cut off Polymarket on July 16, acting on an order from the ANJ, France's national gaming regulator. Now Polymarket says it will take that decision to court.
The company's statement, released Wednesday, pushed back on two fronts. First, it said the block was "surprising" given that French users had already been barred from trading since November 2024. The site stayed online in France only as a read-only information source, showing event probabilities but processing no bets. Blocking that, Polymarket argues, punishes people who visited purely to check the odds on real-world events, not to wager anything.
What the ANJ actually found
The regulator wasn't convinced by the distinction. Its July order cited 578,751 visits from French IP addresses in June alone, a number that apparently signaled continued engagement despite the trading ban. The ANJ also flagged a complaint from France's national weather service: a temperature sensor linked to weather-based markets had been tampered with, triggering a Paris prosecutor's investigation. That detail gave regulators something concrete to point to beyond abstract jurisdictional arguments.
The ANJ had reclassified prediction markets as illegal gambling back in February, citing the absence of stake limits and self-exclusion mechanisms, tools that licensed gambling operators in France are required to offer. Polymarket's counter-argument is structural: its prices emerge from peer-to-peer trading, not from a house taking the other side of bets. The platform holds no position in any market it lists. That makes it, in the company's framing, closer to a financial exchange than a bookmaker.
A pattern spreading across Europe
France is not an isolated case. Polymarket is restricted in more than 30 jurisdictions worldwide. Spain temporarily blocked both Polymarket and its US rival Kalshi in May. The EU's securities watchdog has warned that prediction contracts could fall under the bloc's existing ban on retail binary options, a classification that would essentially close the European market to platforms like these.
The picture looks different across the Atlantic. Polymarket re-entered the US late last year under a structure regulated by the CFTC, giving it a legal framework that European regulators have so far refused to accept. The French court challenge will be one to watch: if Polymarket wins the argument that a read-only website is not a gambling service, it sets a precedent that could matter for every jurisdiction currently sitting on the fence.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
