French National Gambling Authority Announces Blocking of Polymarket Website
The French National Gambling Authority (ANJ) announced on July 17 that the Polymarket website will be blocked within France, following its ban on financial transactions to the site in November 2024.
ANJ stated that the site's real-time updates on event odds constitute advertising. Despite the ban on transactions from French accounts, visits from French IPs reached 578,751 in June and continue to rise.
Polymarket faces tightening regulations in France, with increased compliance pressure on the prediction market platform.
Source: Public Information
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ANJ had previously banned financial transactions on Polymarket, and this upgrade to blocking the website continues France's strict regulatory path on cross-border gambling and prediction markets, similar to past actions against other unlicensed platforms.
ANJ is reinforcing enforcement through blocking and access data, motivated by the need to protect the local regulatory framework and reduce capital outflow, even though users can bypass it using VPNs.
Similar to the early regulatory concerns of the CFTC regarding Polymarket in the U.S., and the varied attitudes of multiple EU countries towards prediction markets, France is currently in a phase of strengthening digital gambling regulations to prevent money laundering and speculative risks.
This represents a regulatory shift: prediction market platforms are evolving from a gray area to outright prohibition, with capital and users concentrating in compliant jurisdictions, and pricing power shifting from open prediction platforms to regulated local entities, accelerating the fragmentation of global prediction markets.
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Rising traffic is a signal of regulatory upgrades, with blocking becoming a last resort for enforcement.
Unlicensed cross-border platforms face local enforcement, with compliance costs ultimately borne by users and traffic.
The higher the regulatory barriers, the more gray capital gathers in friendly jurisdictions, exacerbating the fragmentation of global liquidity in prediction markets.