On 16 July French regulator ANJ ordered providers to block Polymarket, the largest prediction-market platform. In June alone the site drew 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique users. ANJ has monitored operator Adventure One QSS Inc since November 2024, when it classified the platform as illegal gambling. The company geo-blocked transactions from France, but users bypassed the restrictions. On 4 May Paris prosecutors opened a case: weather bets had been manipulated, with suspicions that meteorological sensors were hacked. The platform runs no KYC checks for European clients. ANJ has blocked 1,290 URLs in 2025; prediction markets are also restricted in Germany, Belgium, Romania, Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.
ESMA applies financial regulation
On 3 July the European Securities and Markets Authority reminded firms that contracts with binary payouts tied to an event may fall under MiFID II. If the question concerns interest rates, currencies, commodities, climate or inflation, the contract is a derivative. Binary options for retail clients have been banned across the EU since 2018. German lawyer Wulf Hambach of Hambach & Hambach says such products require a full investment-firm licence and access limited to professional clients. Ismail Vali, president of Gaming Compliance International, argues that ESMA is not creating new rules but restating old ones. 'Often it is exactly after such a reminder that enforcement begins,' he adds.
On 13 July Gibraltar published separate regulations under the Gambling Act 2025, the world's first dedicated regime for prediction markets. Two licences have been issued: to ADI Predictstreet and WagerWire. But after ESMA's clarification a Gibraltar licence offers no shelter: binary contracts on financial assets remain prohibited under MiFID II. Vali notes that if you strip out financial markets, what remains is sport — and that is no longer an innovation but a betting exchange under a different name.
