France’s playing regulator, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), ordered web service suppliers to dam Polymarket on July 16, treating the prediction market as an unlawful playing website quite than a monetary buying and selling venue.
The ANJ mentioned earlier restrictions had did not preserve French customers off the platform. Polymarket drew 578,751 visits from 205,057 distinctive guests in France in June, in keeping with Similarweb knowledge cited by the regulator, regardless of a ban on monetary transactions in place since November 2024. A VPN was sufficient to bypass it.
The homepage remained accessible, permitting customers to view reside markets and odds. The ANJ mentioned the real-time odds show promoted an unauthorized playing service.
“The positioning’s homepage, which dynamically shows real-time odds for numerous occasions open to betting, thus serves as a significant channel for disseminating and selling Polymarket’s choices, regardless that the positioning’s operations should not licensed in France,” the regulator wrote. Fines can attain 100,000 euros ($114,380).
Polymarket didn’t instantly reply to a remark from CoinDesk.
The ANJ additionally cited a criticism from France’s climate service, Météo-France, over a tampered temperature sensor tied to weather-based bets, prompting the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit to open an investigation on Might 4.
