Polymarket goes to court to overturn Dutch gambling ban
US prediction platform Polymarket is challenging the Dutch gambling regulator's ban, arguing its event contracts are financial products, not bets.Summary
US prediction platform Polymarket has filed a case at the court in The Hague to overturn a Dutch ban on its services, arguing that it sells financial products rather than bets. The judges will reportedly decide whether betting on real-world events counts as gambling, as the Dutch gambling regulator Ksa claims. Polymarket contends it is more like trading in derivatives, which should fall under financial markets regulator AFM. Polymarket users buy contracts that pay out in USDC, a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar, if a particular event does or does not occur, which the company compares to futures contracts traded on financial markets.
The Ksa ordered Polymarket to stop serving Dutch users in an order dated January 20 and made public on February 17, saying the platform offered games of chance without a licence and threatening a penalty of 420,000 euros a week, up to a maximum of 840,000 euros. Polymarket blocked Dutch users from placing bets later in February, but the regulator ruled it had acted too late, demanded 420,000 euros in May and rejected the company's objection in June. The platform drew widespread attention in the Netherlands after users staked millions of dollars on the outcome of the October 2025 general election. The Ksa says Dutch law only allows betting on sport, so a licence would not be an option for Polymarket either; director Ella Seijsener said prediction markets offer bets that are not allowed on the Dutch market under any circumstances, not even by licence holders. Last week, MPs voted down a motion from the far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD) asking the government to look into regulating prediction markets as a separate category within gambling law. Gambling lawyer Micha Schimmel told the FD he gives Polymarket's case little chance, pointing to a 2015 ruling which found that a service can be a financial product and still count as gambling. Polymarket is also banned in France and Germany.
(Source：Dutchnews)