France has escalated its crackdown on Polymarket, ordering internet service providers to block access to the crypto-native prediction market after finding users had bypassed earlier restrictions.
What happened
- On July 16, France’s gambling regulator, the Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ), directed ISPs to block Polymarket, saying the platform’s prediction markets amount to gambling services that are not authorized under French law. The ANJ has been monitoring Polymarket since November 2024.
- The regulator said Polymarket’s homepage continued to show live odds and that French traffic to the site kept rising despite previous geoblocking. In June 2026 the ANJ logged 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique visitors from France.
- The ANJ previously used administrative powers to block 1,290 URLs in 2025, but now has moved from restricting transactions to ordering full access blocks after users circumvented the earlier measures.
Why the ANJ acted
- Under French law the ANJ considers prediction market websites to be illegal gambling services when they operate without authorization. The regulator warned that promoting an unauthorized gambling platform — or publicly sharing odds/payout ratios to advertise it — can draw fines of up to €100,000.
- The ANJ also flagged operational and integrity concerns: some event markets “appeared to be rigged” and weather sensors used to settle certain markets “may have been hacked.” Those findings prompted French prosecutors to open a cybercrime investigation on May 4, assigned to the Office for Combating Cybercrime.
- Regulators said Polymarket’s services available to French and EU users lacked adequate user identification and location checks, and that stronger identity/location verification would be needed to stop access by people in France.
Wider regulatory and academic pressure
- France is not alone. The Czech Republic recently ordered ISPs to block Polymarket after classifying it as an unauthorized gambling service.
- European regulators are split on how to treat prediction markets: some view them as gambling, others are evaluating whether certain contracts qualify as securities or derivatives. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has indicated that some event-based contracts could be financial instruments under MiFID II, which would expose them to additional rules and, potentially, existing restrictions on binary options offered to retail traders.
- Academic work has also raised integrity questions. A Stanford-led study examined five-minute Bitcoin prediction markets and found potential incentives for settlement-price manipulation, estimating roughly $1.28 million shifted from regular traders to more sophisticated participants.
Legal and security headaches beyond Europe
- In the United States Polymarket and other prediction market operators have faced legal challenges: Kentucky sued several platforms, including Polymarket and Kalshi, accusing them of offering sports betting without state licenses. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) later challenged state-level intervention — suing Kentucky in a broader fight over who has authority to regulate event contracts.
- Polymarket has also dealt with security incidents. A frontend phishing attack resulted in about $3.1 million in losses across 11 wallets; affected users were slated to receive refunds.
What’s next
- The ANJ said it will continue monitoring Polymarket and any measures the platform introduces to verify user identities and locations. The move to block access in France underscores a growing and uneven regulatory landscape for prediction markets: operators now face a mix of gambling rules, financial regulation, criminal probes and security scrutiny across jurisdictions.
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