The prediction market operator Polymarket says it will fight a ban imposed by the National Gaming Authority (ANJ) of France earlier this month, calling the regulator’s move “surprising.”
Polymarket stopped accepting transactions from France in November 2024, but continued to allow French IP addresses to access the site.
The ANJ and others claimed this encouraged French users to circumvent the transaction ban using solutions such as virtual private networks (VPNs), leading to the latest geoblocking ban order.
“We are disappointed by the ANJ’s sudden decision to unilaterally block our website,” Polymarket wrote in a press release. “We intend to challenge this decision through the legal process in France. […] We disagree with the ANJ’s action.”
The move comes as regulators across the European Union continue to target Polymarket and its major US rivals. Earlier this week, the Irish gambling regulator announced it had completely blocked access to one prediction market provider. And it said it was on the verge of geoblocking a second.
Regulators in Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium have previously taken action against Polymarket.
Polymarket: France Ban is Disappointing
The ANJ’s latest move comes after months of scrutiny of prediction markets in France.
In April, Météo France, the French meteorological agency, filed a complaint to the police after temperatures spiked for a few minutes near one of its sensor sites.
Shortly before the spike, Polymarket saw a rush on contracts backing temperatures to rise above 21 degrees Celsius.
Polymarket currently offers around 500 markets on France-related events, including weather and domestic politics-related contracts.
In June, Jean-Baptiste Vila, a Senior Lecturer and the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of French Polynesia, wrote that the November 2024 ban was “regularly violated through a combination of tactics employed by [Polymarket] and by consumers.”
Vila said French traders “use technological means of circumventing geolocation, which have become widespread.”
“For the past two years, the platform has steadily gained visitors in France. It has had 578,751 visits, and 205,057 unique visitors in June alone,” the ANJ claimed earlier this month.
Operator: French People Use Polymarket for Information, Not Trades
In its press release, Polymarket said it “continues to engage constructively with French authorities.” It said French people only use its site as an “information source.”
“We were […] surprised at the ANJ’s decision to block access to our entire website because their measure targets people going to Polymarket purely for information, not to trade,” the firm said.
It added that it was “proud” that most French people use Polymarket to “learn the probability of future events relevant to their everyday life with no intention to trade.” Prediction markets, it said, “help source truth.”
The US firm said that it is also “in dialogue with the cybercrime unit of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office.”
“Polymarket remains committed to operating in a manner that meets applicable regulatory expectations while preserving the benefits of prediction markets for its users,” the firm wrote.
In February, the French media outlet France Info interviewed a domestic Polymarket trader. The trader said he used VPNs to trade tens of thousands of dollars at a time in politics-related contracts.
Pascal Reynaud, a French lawyer who specializes in online gambling, told the same media outlet that prediction market operators are “not concerned” that they or domestic users may be breaking the law.
“Users risk addiction,” said the lawyer. “They risk losing everything they have.”
Polymarket users have traded almost $116 million in contracts tied to the outcome of next year’s presidential election.
In the past month, much of that money has gone into contracts backing Marine Le Pen, the former head of the far-right National Rally.
