Italy blocks Polymarket again, Lazio's €19m sponsorship deal at risk
Italian authorities have blocked prediction market platform Polymarket for a second time, designating it as illegal gambling. The move puts Lazio's €19 million sponsorship deal with Polymarket at risk, since Italian law bars advertising unlicensed betting operations. Polymarket had briefly continued operating during an appeal before the renewed ban. The action was taken by Italian authorities but the specific agency and stated grounds were not specified in all sources.
Lazio now faces a binary choice: absorb a €19 million revenue hit or violate Italian gambling law by retaining a blacklisted sponsor. No top-tier European football club has yet navigated this knot, so Lazio's next move sets precedent for every sports franchise with a prediction-market partner. Polymarket loses its most visible European brand placement just as ESMA slams the door on retail event contracts continent-wide.
The sponsorship was meant to normalize prediction markets for European consumers; instead it has become a liability poster case. For Polymarket, the Italian ban erodes the CFTC-regulated credibility it leaned on to close the deal. Rivals like Kalshi, also fighting state-level U.S. restrictions, watch Lazio's pain as a warning about European sports marketing. Both platforms must now weigh whether any European sports partnership survives regulatory contact.
Polymarket's Italian blacklist comes just hours after ESMA declared that EU retail binary options rules already bar event contracts, meaning the platform now faces overlapping national and EU-level prohibitions in its most plausible growth market outside the U.S.