France’s ANJ Orders ISP Block on Polymarket, Flags Weather-Data Manipulation Risk
France's gambling regulator classified Polymarket as illegal betting on July 16, ordering ISPs to cut access nationwide.
France’s National Gambling Authority (ANJ) has ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket, escalating regulatory pressure on the prediction-market platform in one of the EU’s largest consumer bases. The ANJ’s president issued the network-level blocking request on July 16, according to the regulator’s own disclosure.
The order does not amount to an EU-wide ban — it is confined to France — but it sets a precedent other national regulators could reference as prediction markets scale trading volume across politics, sports, macro data and crypto-price outcomes.
The Regulator’s Case Against Polymarket
The ANJ classified Polymarket as an unlicensed gambling operation rather than an information or forecasting market. Its stated concerns include consumer addiction risk, the absence of know-your-customer (KYC) controls, and the potential for manipulation of market outcomes.
The regulator specifically flagged weather-data manipulation as one example illustrating how outcome-based markets can be gamed when the underlying data source is narrow or influenceable. That detail matters for traders: it signals French authorities are scrutinizing low-liquidity, niche resolution markets — not just headline political or election contracts — as a structural vulnerability of the model.
Why KYC Gaps Draw Regulatory Fire
Crypto-native prediction markets settle through digital wallets rather than conventional brokerage accounts, which creates an enforcement gap regulators find difficult to close through licensing alone. Without onboarding checks, authorities cannot verify age, residency, or whether a user has been flagged for prior gambling-related harm — the exact triggers the ANJ cited.
ISP-level blocking is a blunt instrument. It does not stop determined users from routing around restrictions with VPNs, but it raises access friction and puts payment processors, liquidity providers and local users on notice that continued engagement carries jurisdictional risk.
Market-Structure Read for Prediction Markets
For a sector built on the premise that market prices aggregate real-world probability better than polling or forecasting, a gambling-law classification undercuts the core pitch. If regulators treat every binary-settled contract as a bet rather than a data instrument, platforms lose the legal framing that has let them expand across jurisdictions with minimal local licensing.
Traders and market makers active on Polymarket-style venues should watch for contagion: other EU gambling authorities operate under similar consumer-protection mandates, and a national ISP block from a G7 regulator gives them a tested template rather than a novel legal theory to build from.
The near-term impact on Polymarket’s aggregate volume is unclear, since France is only one access point in a global user base. But the action adds to a pattern of jurisdictions pushing crypto-settled prediction markets toward the same licensing scrutiny long applied to traditional betting operators.