The National Gaming Authority (ANJ) in France announced on Friday blocking access to the news betting site Polymarket, on which it had already been prohibited since November 2024 to carry out financial transactions from France.
Internet users nevertheless still had access to the home page which displayed “in real time and dynamically the odds associated with the various events likely to be the subject of bets”, according to the press release.
The ANJ considers that this can be assimilated to advertising for an unauthorized activity in the territory, hence the closure of access from now on.
In Europe, several countries have already restricted or blocked predictive markets such as Germany, Belgium, Romania, Switzerland, Poland, Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, Czech Republic, according to the ANJ press release.
“Advertising, by any means whatsoever, in favor of an unauthorized betting or gambling site is a criminal offense,” recalls the ANJ.
“Anyone who advertises such an offer may be punished with a fine of 100,000 euros”, specifies the press release, “the same penalty is also incurred by anyone who has, by any means whatsoever, disseminated to the public, for the purposes of promoting unauthorized online gaming sites, the odds and reports offered by these unauthorized sites”.
For two years, the Polymarket platform “has continued to gain visitors on French territory with, last June, 578,751 visits, and 205,057 unique visitors”, according to the ANJ.
In April, Météo-France filed a complaint for the alteration of the functioning of one of its temperature measurement probes in connection with online betting on Polymarket.
The ANJ recalled Friday that “bets on the weather revealed that weather probes could have been hacked. An investigation was opened on this point on May 4, 2026 by the anti-cybercrime section of the Paris public prosecutor’s office, entrusted to the OFAC (Anti-Cybercrime Office).”
“Prediction markets are attracting growing interest from regulatory authorities,” underlines the ANJ. But “the hybrid nature of these markets can explain the varied approaches of regulatory authorities around the world,” she notes.
