Overview
- France’s National Gambling Authority ordered internet service providers to block Polymarket on July 16, saying the site exposed users to large gambling losses and offered contracts that could be manipulated.
- Polymarket said on July 22 it will sue in French courts to restore access and argued the block is disproportionate because the company disabled trading from France in November 2024 and only allowed information viewing since then.
- The ANJ cited data showing over 578,000 visits from France in June 2026 as part of its rationale and said the block will stay until Polymarket meets French gambling rules.
- Polymarket has referred nearly 100 suspicious crypto wallets to law enforcement and reporting flagged roughly $200 million in first-half 2026 trades with patterns that prompted probes of possible insider or manipulative activity.
- The legal fight could set a Europe-wide precedent on whether national gambling law or financial-market rules govern prediction markets and may affect user access, platform liquidity, and how regulators in the U.S. and EU write future rules.