After being included in the list of sites inhibited by the Customs and Monopolies Agency (Adm) last July 10, Polymarket will no longer be accessible in Italy from Monday, July 27. This was reported by the specialized press agency Agipro. The main international prediction market platform has been obscured in Italy as part of the fight against illegal gambling. In fact, as Agimeg explains, the site is considered by Adm to be comparable to an unauthorized betting operator.
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The first stop
The precedent dates back to November 2025. Polymarket had been included by Adm in the list of platforms not authorized to offer services related to public gambling in Italy, but the Lazio Regional Administrative Court had reopened the site. Polymarket – according to Agimeg – had argued on that occasion that its activity was not comparable to that of a traditional betting operator, but to a prediction market based on the exchange of shares between users.
The new obscuration therefore reopens a complex issue, which sees on one side Polymarket, which maintains the prediction market nature of its activity, and on the other Adm, which considers the platform attributable to the scope of activities subject to the concession regime provided for public gambling. The matter is further complicated as the obscuration jeopardizes the sponsorship agreement between the platform and the Serie A football team S.S. Lazio.
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Restrictions in Europe
The restrictions against Polymarket adopted in Italy are not an isolated case. The approach of the Customs and Monopolies Agency is in line with that prevailing in the rest of the continent. On July 16, a few days after Adm’s decision, the French National Gaming Authority (Anj) also ordered the blocking of the site, accused of promoting an illegal gambling offer. Already in 2024, after a first warning, as Agimeg recalls, Adventure One QSS Inc., the company that manages Polymarket, had introduced a geographical block to prevent financial transactions from France.
Then, on July 21, Turkey blocked access to the platform due to alleged illegal betting. Agipro explains that Spain also blocked the site for four months in early June, equating prediction markets with gambling. In the Netherlands, however, the regulator had ordered Polymarket to cease operations in February, comparing its offering to illegal gambling.
