France orders ISPs to block Polymarket over unauthorized crypto gambling

France has ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket, escalating its enforcement against the crypto-based prediction market after the national gambling regulator said the platform was offering unauthorized gambling services to users in the country.

France’s gambling regulator, the Autorité nationale des jeux, or ANJ, said its president ordered French internet service providers on July 16 to block the Polymarket website. The regulator published a public notice a day later, saying the platform was promoting an illegal gambling offer in France and presenting the move as a consumer-protection measure. ANJ said the service raised risks related to addiction, market integrity and inadequate user-identification checks for French users. It also said some contracts on the platform appeared vulnerable to manipulation.

The regulator pointed to the platform’s reach in France as a reason for stepping up action. Citing traffic data attributed to SimilarWeb, ANJ said Polymarket recorded 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique visitors from France in June. The move also marks an escalation from earlier French action. ANJ said it had already intervened in November 2024, after which Polymarket implemented geoblocking of French financial transactions and services, but the regulator said those restrictions were circumvented in practice.

ANJ’s notice also said a cybercrime investigation was opened on May 4 by the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit, with the matter entrusted to OFAC, the French anti-cybercrime office. The regulator used the notice to warn that advertising unauthorized gambling services is a criminal offense in France and said violators can face an administrative fine of up to 100,000 euros. Reuters and other independent outlets matched the ANJ’s dates and core explanation for the block.

Polymarket did not have an immediate public response identified in the available research.

Polymarket is a prediction-market platform where users trade on the outcomes of real-world events using cryptocurrency-based rails. Regulators in some jurisdictions treat those products as gambling, or gambling-like services, when they are offered without local authorization. The French action fits a broader pattern of European scrutiny of prediction-market platforms. In the United States, Polymarket settled with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 over allegations that it offered unregistered event contracts to U.S. users.