Polymarket has filed a legal petition in France challenging the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) decision that ordered internet service providers to block its website, escalating a dispute that has run since November 2024.
The petition was filed on 21 August 2026 through what the company described as the appropriate legal channels in France. It targets the blocking order signed by the ANJ president on 16 July 2026 and announced by the regulator the following day.
The order requires French ISPs to cut access to polymarket.com on the grounds that the platform promotes an unauthorised gambling offer. Polymarket is operated by Adventure One QSS Inc.
What the ANJ found
The regulator recorded 578,751 visits to the site from France in June 2026, from 205,057 unique visitors. That traffic, combined with a homepage displaying live odds on political and news events, was treated as promotion of an illegal gambling offer.
The ANJ also pointed to the absence of user identification checks on the platform, and to an investigation opened on 4 May 2026 into the manipulation of weather sensors used to settle certain markets.
Under French law, promoting an unauthorised gambling offer carries a fine of €100,000. The blocking power is administrative: the ANJ president can order ISPs to restrict access without first obtaining a court ruling, which is the point Polymarket is now testing.
Polymarket’s argument
The company says it geoblocked French users from trading in November 2024, after discussions with the ANJ, and that no new enforcement action followed until the president’s cease-and-desist notice in June 2026. On that account the July order was imposed on a platform that had already withdrawn from the French market for trading purposes.
Polymarket’s second argument is about what the block actually removes. It says the site provides real-time insight into public sentiment, geopolitical events and forecasting trends, and that cutting off passive viewing of that data goes beyond what the gambling offence requires. The company says it remains open to dialogue with the regulator.
The ANJ’s counter-position is already on the record in the July decision: the live odds on the homepage are the promotion, whether or not a French user can place a trade. Geoblocking that users circumvent does not remove the offer from view.
Why the case matters beyond France
Prediction markets have moved closer to the regulated sports betting industry through 2026. Polymarket signed a data agreement with Sportradar that now covers more than 20 leagues, the kind of supply arrangement usually seen between a licensed sportsbook and a data provider.
European regulators have read that direction of travel the same way. The Dutch regulator, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has pursued Adventure One QSS over Polymarket’s accessibility in the Netherlands, working from the same position the ANJ has taken: event contracts settled for money are bets, whatever the exchange mechanics or the crypto rails underneath them.
France is the first European market where the operator has answered with litigation. A ruling that upholds the ANJ order would confirm that displaying odds is enough to trigger the blocking power, even where trading is already closed to local users. A ruling that narrows it would give prediction markets a defined space to operate as information services in the European Union while keeping trading out of restricted markets.
What happens next
No hearing date has been made public, and neither Polymarket nor the ANJ has said how long the process is expected to take. The blocking order stays in force while the petition is pending unless the court suspends it.
The outcome will shape how the rest of the sector reacts. Operators watching from licensed markets have an interest in the ANJ winning, since a broad reading of the promotion offence keeps unlicensed event contracts off French screens. Prediction market platforms with European ambitions need the opposite result, and this is the first case that will give them a written answer.
Source: Polymarket
