Czech Republic orders ISPs to block Polymarket as unauthorized gambling site
The Czech Ministry of Finance added Polymarket to its blacklist of unauthorized online gambling sites on Wednesday, ordering internet service providers to block Czech access to the platform within 15 days. Czech authorities classify Polymarket as an unlicensed gambling operator under national law rather than a regulated financial exchange. The regulator rejected the argument that marketing binary-style products as event contracts exempts them from EU financial rules.
Polymarket's European strategy now faces a direct chokepoint: national regulators are treating its event contracts as gambling, not derivatives, and forcing ISPs to cut local access. The Czech block gives the platform 15 days to decide whether to geofence, litigate, or attempt local licensing negotiations that were never built into its model. Each new blacklist shrinks the addressable EU market and multiplies compliance cost assumptions investors baked into the $22 billion valuation.
For rival platforms like Kalshi, the precedent is equally chilling; no CFTC registration carries weight when a member state reclassifies the product entirely. The ESMA's July 3 warning that EU retail binary options rules already cover prediction-market event contracts set the framework that national regulators are now applying, leaving operators no graceful exit from the binary-options label. Sports sponsorships and retail expansion plans into Europe look increasingly untenable as the enforcement pattern widens beyond a single jurisdiction.
Joins Italy on the growing list of European nations treating Polymarket as an unauthorized gambling operator, applying ESMA's recent binary-options framing to national enforcement.