Polymarket ‘surprised’ France blocked site as information source, plans legal challenge

France's gaming authority decided to block access to Polymarket's website, and now the prediction market says it plans to challenge that decision.

"We are disappointed by the French gaming authority’s (ANJ’s) sudden decision to unilaterally block our website — we intend to challenge this decision through the legal process in France," Polymarket said Wednesday.

Last week, the ANJ ordered French internet service providers to block access to Polymarket ahead of the World Cup final even though the prediction market had disabled trading there more than a year ago. Polymarket appears to have been taken aback by the decision.

"Polymarket has blocked trading from France since November 2024, but has continued to allow French users to access Polymarket as an information source," the firm said. "We were therefore surprised at the ANJ decision to block access to our entire website because their measure targets people going to Polymarket purely for information, not to trade."

The ANJ said in a statement Friday the site "is promoting an illegal gambling and betting offering" and could expose users to significant gambling losses, and that some wagers offered on it could be manipulated.

Although Polymarket said it banned French users from gambling, the site still drew 578,751 visits from 205,057 unique visitors in France in June, according to Similarweb data cited by the ANJ. The regulator added that Polymarket's homepage, despite being in view mode only, displays live odds and is therefore advertising gambling from an unauthorized service.

"We are proud that most people come to Polymarket solely to learn the probability of future events relevant to their everyday life with no intention to trade. Prediction markets help source truth," Polymarket said Wednesday.

While the world’s two biggest prediction market platforms, Polymarket and Kalshi, have been major successes in tech, achieving multibillion-dollar valuations and attracting loads of media attention, their rise has also been met with resistance. Many argue that the sites simply offer people ways to gamble on specific events. Regulators in both Europe and some U.S. states have sought to limit or ban the platforms.

Meanwhile, other stock and crypto trading platforms, including Robinhood and Coinbase, hope to make prediction markets a significant part of their revenue streams.