France’s gambling regulator, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), ordered internet service providers to block Polymarket on July 16, treating the prediction market as an illegal gambling site rather than a financial trading venue.
The ANJ said previous restrictions failed to keep French users off the platform. Polymarket received 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 prevent this.
The homepage remained accessible, allowing users to view live markets and odds. The ANJ said the display of real-time odds promoted an unauthorized gambling service.
“The home page of the site, which dynamically displays the real-time odds of various events open to betting, thus serves as an important channel to disseminate and promote Polymarket’s offers, although the site’s operations are not authorized in France,” the regulator wrote. 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 the French meteorological service, Météo-France, about a manipulated temperature sensor linked to weather-based betting, prompting the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit to open an investigation on May 4.
