Polymarket just lost direct access to one of its biggest European audiences. On July 16, the head of France's National Gambling Authority (ANJ) signed an order requiring every internet provider in the country to block the platform's website — reportedly the first time a European regulator has gone after a major prediction market with a full network-level domain block, rather than just cutting off payments.
The fight started back in November 2024, when French authorities banned banks and payment processors from handling transfers to Polymarket. The idea was that cutting off the money would kill local interest. It didn't: the platform accepts crypto deposits, so users simply routed around the banking system. According to the ANJ, French IP addresses generated 578,751 visits to the site last month alone — traffic actually grew, not shrank.
The regulator's reasoning is blunt: advertising or making an unlicensed betting site accessible is a criminal offense under French law, whether it's a traditional bookmaker or a blockchain-based prediction market. The ANJ points to manipulation risk and a specific incident from April, when France's national weather service, Météo-France, was allegedly hacked to skew data feeding weather-related bets on the platform. ISPs that ignore the block face fines of up to €100,000.
The timing is awkward for Polymarket. Reuters estimates its annualized revenue has topped $1 billion, even as the platform gets dragged into a string of insider-trading scandals in the US — including a soldier accused of pocketing over $400,000 on classified information and a White House staffer suspended for betting on the content of a Trump speech. Spain already blocked Polymarket and Kalshi temporarily in May, Germany and Italy restrict access through similar means, and the US CFTC released draft rules for prediction markets back in June.
None of this is fatal for Polymarket on its own — a VPN gets around a domain block easily enough, and plenty of users will keep finding their way in. But the precedent matters. If other EU regulators start reaching for network-level blocks instead of payment bans, prediction markets could find their legal room in Europe shrinking fast, right as the US edges toward giving them a regulated path to grow.
