Polymarket goes to court to overturn Dutch gambling ban
US prediction platform Polymarket has gone to court in The Hague to overturn a Dutch ban on its services, arguing...
Prediction platform Polymarket is taking legal action in The Hague to challenge a Dutch ban on its services. The company contends that it sells financial products, not bets, and therefore should not be subject to gambling regulations. Polymarket users purchase contracts that pay out in USDC, a cryptocurrency valued at the US dollar, if a specific event occurs.
The Dutch gambling regulator, Ksa, insists that betting on real-world events is gambling. Polymarket argues that its offerings are more akin to trading derivatives, which should fall under the supervision of the financial markets regulator, AFM. The Ksa issued an order on January 20, prohibiting Polymarket from serving Dutch users, and threatened a weekly penalty of €420,000, up to a maximum of €840,000.
Despite Polymarket halting Dutch users' access to the platform in February, the regulator accused it of acting too late and demanded the fine in May, rejecting the company's objection in June. Dutch law only permits betting on sports, leaving Polymarket without a licence option. Ksa director Ella Seijsener commented that prediction markets are gaining popularity in the Netherlands, but Dutch law does not permit them.
A recent vote by MPs from the far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD) to investigate prediction markets as a separate category within gambling law was unsuccessful. Polymarket has also faced bans in France and Germany. Local gambling lawyer Micha Schimmel expressed little confidence in Polymarket's case, citing a 2015 ruling that determined a service can be a financial product and still be classified as gambling.
Written by urgent.news from DutchNews's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
