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 reasonably than a monetary buying and selling venue.
The ANJ mentioned earlier restrictions had didn’t maintain French customers off the platform. Polymarket drew 578,751 visits from 205,057 distinctive guests in France in June, in keeping with Similarweb information 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 dwell markets and odds. The ANJ mentioned the real-time odds show promoted an unauthorized playing service.
“The location’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, though the location’s operations usually are 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 grievance 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 Could 4.