France bans prediction market Polymarket, leaves Kalshi untouched

France’s National Authority on Games (Autorité Nationale des Jeux, ANJ), invoking a power it has wielded since 2022, has placed an administrative block on Polymarket. As we have verified, the website is blocked within the country, the URL now calling up a static page from the ANJ.

The crux of the matter for France is that Polymarket both offers and advertises illegal games of chance. Such illegal games qualify as event contracts, which France defines as:

1. concerning a specific event with a binary (yes/no) outcome
2. having a clear and public resolution grounded in a predetermined source of information
3. having a closing date

Trouble is, Polymarket’s website displays odds in real time and dynamically and thereby constitutes “a major vector for the spread and promotion” of Polymarket’s illegal offerings. Any advertising of unauthorized betting site is in France a criminal offense.

According to its statement from February, the ANJ seeks to protect the public, which could mistake a game of chance for an investment. It likens event contracts to crypto trades. Polymarket, says ANJ, is dangerous insofar as it is available round-the-clock, sets no limits on betting aside from the amount, sets no a limit on time, undertakes no check on identity to bar minors and so forth, and it pairs this with visibility, accessibility and virality.

Moreover, the bettor, in betting, is put in a position to influence probability. The market therefore creates a financial incentive to “provoke or accelerate negative outcomes such as the sabotage of sport or violent geopolitical acts.”

For the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), which issued a separate statement on July 3, illegality hinges on whether an event contract qualifies as a financial instrument. To this end the commercial name “event contract” is “irrelevant.” What matters is whether such a contract concerns an “event question” listed in law, specifically Section C(4) to (10) of Annex I of MiFID II (an option, future, swap, forward or other such derivative).

By the authority’s own account, Polymarket has gained visitors steadily over the past two years, drawing 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique visitors this past June. This rise has occurred despite Polymarket’s “geoblocking” by parent company Adventure One QSS Inc., at ANJ’s request, in November 2024. As of then the French public could continue to browse Polymarket but no longer buy into event contracts – or not with workarounds (“contournements”), as ANJ puts it.

Discrepancy?

Polymarket’s biggest competitor, Kalshi, remains online in France, at least as of this writing, and it is unclear why.

Kalshi’s homepage, like Polymarket’s, displays odds in real time and dynamically. Kalshi also advertised during the World Cup, in ways visible on French television. In fact, ADI Predictstreet, the Official Prediction Market Partner of the FIFA World Cup 2026, formed a branding and product partnership with Kalshi in late June, during the tournament. Kalshi was to be “co-branded alongside ADI Predictstreet in stadium, TV, and online placements.” Its name was likely visible on French television during the Cup.

In the US there is a perhaps key difference between the two leading prediction markets. A recent piece by the New York Times describes a feud between the Shayne Coplan, founder of Polymarket, and Tarek Mansour, CEO of Kalshi. Among the claims is that Kalshi sought and obtained from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) a license to run a prediction market before offering any bets; the first was in 2021. Polymarket, by contrast, just set up offshore and began doing business, and the CFTC fined it ($1.4m) in January 2022 for operating an unregistered platform.

A further claim is that Kalshi’s lawyers met with federal prosecutors in Manhattan to explain Polymarket’s operations and its evasion of a ban. There ensued a raid on Coplan’s apartment in the city.

Elsewhere

Spain’s Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego, DGOJ) opened on May 26 a sanctioning proceeding (an inquiry that could lead to penalty) against Polymarket and Kalshi for operating without administrative approval.

India’s new Online Gaming Rules entered into force on May 1. There is no mention of predictions markets, event contracts or firms by name. Instead, the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act (2025) prohibits:

• online money games and services (section 5)
• advertisements related to online money games (section 6)
• the transfer of funds to online money games (section 7)

On April 24 Brazil’s National Monetary Council (Conselho Monetário Nacional, CMN) prohibited derivates whose underlying assets relate to:

• real sporting-themed events (as defined in Law No. 14,790 of Dec. 29, 2023)
• virtual events in online games (as defined in the same law)
• real or virtual events of a political, electoral, social, cultural, entertainment or any other nature that, at the discretion of the Securities and Exchange Commission (Comissão de Valores Mobiliários), are not representative of an economic-financial reference

On Aug. 13, 2025, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) blocked Polymarket, along with three smaller sites.