France Orders Internet Providers to Block Access to Polymarket

France’s national gambling regulator has ordered the country’s internet service providers to block access to Polymarket, escalating a fight with the prediction market platform that started nearly two years ago. The Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) announced the order on July 16, 2026, ratcheting up an existing ban from a payments-level restriction to a full network-level block.

The move comes after France’s earlier attempt to curb Polymarket’s reach in the country fell short. In November 2024, the ANJ barred financial transactions between French bank accounts and Polymarket, effectively stopping French residents from depositing or withdrawing funds on the platform. Polymarket responded by geoblocking French users from trading, but the site’s homepage remained visible, still displaying live odds and betting markets to anyone in the country who visited.

Traffic Kept Climbing Despite the Payments Ban

That workaround is exactly what pushed the ANJ toward a harder line. According to Similarweb data cited by the regulator, Polymarket drew 578,751 visits from 205,057 unique visitors in France in June 2026 alone — a number that kept climbing even after the financial-transaction restrictions took effect. The ANJ argued that Polymarket’s continued availability, particularly its real-time display of odds on political, sports, and other events, amounted to advertising for an unauthorized gambling product.

“Advertising, by any means whatsoever, in favor of an unauthorized betting or gambling site is a criminal offense,” the ANJ said in its statement, warning that violations could carry fines of up to €100,000 (roughly $114,000). Rather than pursue a case against Polymarket directly, the regulator instructed the intermediaries that carry French internet traffic to stop resolving the site — the same enforcement tool France has used against more than 1,290 other unlicensed gambling URLs.

A Novel Legal Theory With Limited Bite

The ANJ’s position rests on a theory that mere visibility of live odds, even without the ability to place a wager from a French account, functions as solicitation for an illegal betting product. France classifies Polymarket as an unlicensed gambling operator rather than a financial trading venue, putting it outside the country’s 16 ANJ-licensed sportsbook operators. France joins Germany, Italy, and Spain among European countries that restrict or block access to prediction markets, according to the regulator.

Enforcement, however, has clear limits. ISP-level blocks of this kind are commonly circumvented with a VPN or a mirror domain, and the November 2024 geoblock on transactions didn’t stop hundreds of thousands of French visits from continuing each month. The ANJ has not announced any penalty for individual French users, and the order targets network providers rather than Polymarket itself or the people using it. The regulator said the block will remain in place for as long as it considers the platform noncompliant with French gambling law, with the timing landing just days before a marquee global sporting event that had drawn heavy betting interest on the platform.

The episode underscores a broader tension playing out across whether prediction markets are legal in jurisdictions that already regulate sports betting and gambling separately from financial markets. As platforms like Polymarket continue to draw global trading volume, regulators outside the U.S. are increasingly treating them as gambling products first and financial instruments second — a distinction that will keep shaping how bettors compare prediction markets vs. sports betting platforms going forward.