On July 16, the National Gaming Authority (ANJ), France’s gambling regulator, ordered Internet service providers to block Polymarket, treating the predictions market as an illegal gambling site rather than a financial trading platform.
The ANJ said previous restrictions had failed to keep French users away from the platform. Polymarket attracted 578,751 visits from 205,057 unique visitors in France in June, according to Similarweb data cited by the regulator, despite the ban on financial transactions in force since November 2024. A VPN was enough to get around it.
The home page remained accessible, allowing users to view live markets and quotes. The ANJ said the display of real-time odds promoted an unauthorized gambling service.
“The site’s home page, which displays dynamically and in real time the odds of the various events open to betting, thus constitutes a major channel for disseminating and promoting Polymarket’s offers, even if the site’s activity is not authorized in France,” writes the regulator. Fines can reach 100,000 euros ($114,380).
Polymarket did not immediately respond to a comment from CoinDesk.
The ANJ also cited a complaint from Météo-France regarding a falsified temperature sensor linked to weather betting, which prompted the Paris prosecutor’s office’s cybercrime unit to open an investigation on May 4.
