France Orders ISPs to Fully Block Polymarket, Citing Fraud and Illegal Gambling

France just shut the door Polymarket kept propping open.

The Autorité Nationale Des Jeux, France's national gambling regulator, ordered internet service providers on Friday, July 17, to fully block access to Polymarket nationwide, according to Engadget and DAWN. This goes further than the ANJ's November 2024 order, which only cut off financial transactions from French accounts. That earlier ban didn't work.

French residents kept visiting anyway. The ANJ says Polymarket logged 578,751 visits from French IP addresses in June alone, with 205,057 of those unique visitors, according to Engadget. People found ways around the geoblock, and the site's live odds stayed visible to anyone who wanted to look.

That visibility is exactly what got Polymarket in deeper trouble. The ANJ says displaying real-time betting odds to French users counts as illegal gambling advertising under French law, according to news.bitcoin.com. "Advertising, by any means whatsoever, in favor of an unauthorized betting or gambling site is a criminal offense," the regulator said, per DAWN and news.bitcoin.com. Violations can draw fines up to 100,000 euros, about $114,000.

A Hacked Weather Probe Started This

The deeper issue is that someone allegedly rigged the outcome.

In April, France's national weather service Meteo-France filed a complaint after one of its digital weather probes was hacked, according to news.bitcoin.com and DAWN. Investigators say the tampering was designed to manipulate data feeding into Polymarket's weather-related prediction pools, letting whoever pulled it off lock in guaranteed payouts on bets that weren't actually random anymore.

Paris prosecutors' cybercrime unit opened a formal investigation. According to news.bitcoin.com, investigators found Polymarket lacked basic safeguards, including standard identity verification and know-your-customer compliance, making the platform an easy target for this kind of manipulation. No charges tied to the Meteo-France incident have been publicly announced as of this writing.

Coinpedia adds another wrinkle: a French trader known as Fredi9999 reportedly moved prediction market odds by placing multi-million-dollar bets on U.S. political events, walking away with roughly $50 million. That case raises the same core concern regulators keep citing. Whoever has the deepest pockets can bend the odds, and ordinary bettors have no way to know it's happening.

The Case for Prediction Markets

None of this means prediction markets are inherently a scam. Supporters argue these platforms aggregate real money and real risk into probability estimates that often beat pundits and pollsters. Betting markets called several recent elections more accurately than traditional polling averages, which is the whole pitch: skin in the game produces better information than talking heads guessing on TV.

The problem France is flagging isn't the concept. It's the execution. No KYC checks. No verified identity behind large trades. No clear defense against someone hacking a data feed that settles a market. Regulators are pointing to a specific, actionable gap in how the platform operates, separate from any argument about whether prediction markets should exist at all.

Part of a Bigger Pattern

France isn't alone. Germany, Italy, and Spain have all imposed restrictions on sites like Polymarket, according to DAWN and Engadget. Spain ordered its own block on both Polymarket and Kalshi while investigators there determine whether the platforms violate Spanish gambling law, per Engadget.

In the U.S., Minnesota passed a law banning prediction markets from operating in the state, and other states have filed lawsuits against Polymarket and Kalshi, according to Engadget.

The insider-trading concerns aren't limited to Europe, either. A U.S. soldier now faces federal charges for allegedly using classified military intelligence to bet on the outcome of the January operation targeting former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, reportedly netting more than $400,000, according to news.bitcoin.com and DAWN. That case is a pending federal prosecution, not a conviction.

Separately, the White House confirmed Thursday, July 16, that it suspended a teleprompter operator over allegations he placed prediction-market bets tied to the content of President Trump's speeches, according to DAWN and news.bitcoin.com. No further details on charges or an ongoing investigation into that individual have been made public.

What's Unresolved

Polymarket has not issued a public response addressed in these reports to France's block or to the Meteo-France hacking complaint. Coinpedia reports the platform still generates more than $1 billion in annualized revenue and faces restrictions in more than 33 countries, meaning the French block is a dent, not a knockout.

Whether prediction markets can build real safeguards, verified identity, tamper-proof data feeds, and insider-trading detection fast enough to outrun the regulators now lining up against them remains unclear. France says the site stays blocked until Polymarket complies with French law. Nobody has said what compliance would actually look like.