Regulators across a growing number of European jurisdictions are treating prediction-market platforms as unauthorized gambling services and, in several cases, ordering internet providers to restrict access. Across the Atlantic, the United States has allowed federally regulated exchanges to list event contracts under derivatives law, although a widening series of court disputes shows that the American position is not settled.
The result is a jurisdictional split over products that can look almost identical to users. A contract paying out according to an election, sporting event, economic release or weather outcome may be classified as illegal gambling in one country, a federally regulated derivative in another and a potential breach of state betting law somewhere else.
France and the Czech Republic have recently escalated enforcement against Polymarket by moving beyond warnings and targeting the infrastructure through which users reach the platform. In the United States, Kalshi operates as a designated contract market regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, while Polymarket has pursued a regulated route back into the US market following its earlier CFTC settlement.
France Escalates From Geoblocking to ISP Restrictions
France’s Autorité Nationale des Jeux ordered domestic internet service providers to block Polymarket after concluding that the platform was offering unauthorized gambling services. The ANJ issued the order on July 16 and announced the measure the following day, extending enforcement beyond the platform itself to the internet providers used by French customers.
The regulator estimated that Polymarket recorded 578,751 visits from France in June 2026, involving 205,057 unique visitors. Those figures make the action more than a procedural gambling-law decision. The order is intended to switch off access to a market that had retained a substantial French audience despite earlier restrictions.
The ISP block was also an escalation rather than France’s first intervention. The ANJ contacted Polymarket in November 2024 over services it considered capable of constituting unauthorized gambling. Polymarket subsequently restricted French users and suspended their ability to enter transactions, but the regulator said users continued to circumvent those controls. That history helps explain why France moved from an operator-level warning to an ISP-level order.
France’s stated concerns extend beyond the absence of a gambling licence. The ANJ has pointed to weak identity controls, the absence of effective betting limits and self-exclusion tools, and features it believes can expose users to excessive gambling risks. The action also followed a cybercrime investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office on May 4 into suspected manipulation involving weather-linked prediction markets.
The French measures were covered separately by FinanceFeeds in reports on the initial Polymarket block and the ISP enforcement order. The broader consequence is that France is no longer relying on the platform to keep local users out. It is requiring internet providers to enforce the restriction.
The Czech Republic Uses Its Unauthorized-Gambling List
The Czech Ministry of Finance took a similar access-based approach by adding Polymarket to its List of Unauthorized Internet Games on July 13. Under Section 84a of the country’s Gambling Act, internet providers were required to block the relevant domains within 15 days.
The Czech action places Polymarket inside an existing enforcement system used against gambling websites that operate without domestic authorization. FinanceFeeds previously covered the Czech ISP order against Polymarket.
France and the Czech Republic are not isolated cases. Access to Polymarket has also been restricted across a wider group of jurisdictions, including several European countries that classify its contracts under gambling law rather than financial-market rules. The specific legal grounds differ, so the actions should not be presented as one coordinated European policy. The common result, however, is that national regulators are increasingly willing to block the platform rather than rely on warnings or voluntary geofencing.
The United States Starts From Derivatives Law
The federal US framework begins with a different classification. Kalshi has been registered as a CFTC-designated contract market since 2020, allowing it to list event contracts under the Commodity Exchange Act and the commission’s rules. Its products have included contracts tied to economic indicators, elections, entertainment and sports.
That federal designation gives Kalshi an argument unavailable to an ordinary sportsbook. The company maintains that its contracts are federally regulated derivatives and that the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over trading conducted on its market.
Polymarket’s position is different. The crypto-based platform settled a CFTC enforcement action in 2022 for operating an unregistered event-contract facility and restricted access for US users. Its re-entry into the US market has depended on regulated infrastructure rather than an assertion that its offshore platform is automatically lawful nationwide.
The distinction matters. Kalshi is a federally designated exchange. Polymarket’s US operations must be described according to the regulated structure through which they are offered, rather than treating the global platform as unconditionally legal in all 50 states.
New York Pushes Back Against Federal Preemption
Even Kalshi’s federal status has not ended the legal dispute. US District Judge Analisa Torres denied the company’s request for a preliminary injunction against New York gambling enforcement, finding that the Commodity Exchange Act does not necessarily preempt the state’s gambling laws as applied to Kalshi’s contracts.
Kalshi filed a notice of appeal to the Second Circuit on the same day. The case now sits in tension with an earlier Third Circuit ruling involving New Jersey, where the court accepted that Kalshi’s contracts were likely within the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction and could not simply be regulated as state gambling products.
The disagreement has created a circuit-level split in legal reasoning. Under the Third Circuit approach, federal derivatives regulation can prevent a state from applying its gambling laws to contracts listed on a CFTC-regulated exchange. Under the New York court’s analysis, state gambling rules may continue to apply alongside federal commodities law.
The CFTC has also entered the dispute directly. On April 2, the commission sued Arizona, Connecticut and Illinois over state efforts to regulate federally listed event contracts. The agency argues that allowing separate state regimes would undermine the uniform national framework created for derivatives markets.
Platform Access Now Depends on the Jurisdiction
For prediction-market operators, the immediate consequence is fragmented access. A platform may hold federal authorization in the United States and still face cease-and-desist orders, litigation or restrictions at state level. In Europe, users may lose access entirely when regulators classify the service as unauthorized gambling and compel internet providers to block it.
The legal distinction between a bet and a derivative therefore determines far more than which regulator receives a filing. It affects whether a platform can advertise, accept customers, list sports contracts, process payments and remain accessible through local internet providers.
Europe and the United States are not operating under two completely unified systems. European restrictions remain national, while the US is divided between the CFTC’s federal position and state gambling enforcement. The direction of travel is nevertheless increasingly clear: several European regulators are restricting Polymarket through gambling law, while the US federal framework is licensing event-contract exchanges and fighting states over how far that authority extends.
The eventual outcome may depend less on what platforms call prediction markets than on whether courts and regulators classify the contracts as financial derivatives, gambling products or capable of falling under both regimes at the same time.
