Lithuania Blocks Polymarket After Its Regulator Placed Sports Bets on the Site

The Gaming Supervisory Authority opened an account, funded it and bet on sports results, then took the evidence to the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court. Internet providers must block the site and payment firms must stop dealing with Adventure One QSS. It is the first prediction market Lithuania has treated as an unlicensed bookmaker, and the 2,204th site it has blocked.

• Lithuania's Gaming Supervisory Authority (Lošimų priežiūros tarnyba, LPT), a department of the Ministry of Finance, has ordered internet service providers to block Polymarket and payment service providers to end all transactions with its operator, Adventure One QSS, Inc., after a decision of the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court, SBC News and Gaming Intelligence report
• During its investigation the regulator created and funded a Polymarket account and placed bets at fixed prices on the outcomes of sporting events, which it treated as unlicensed betting because Polymarket holds no Lithuanian licence, according to Gaming Intelligence
• "Although the website stated that it provided the opportunity to participate in a 'prediction market', the investigation identified signs of gambling, betting," the LPT said, adding that "such gambling was organised without a licence and permit"
• The authority says it has now blocked 2,204 illegal remote gambling websites; Polymarket is the first prediction market among them
• Lithuania joins Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Hungary in restricting the platform in Europe, and South Korea moved against it last month, SBC News reports

A Test Purchase, a Court Order, and a Blocked Domain

Lithuania's gambling regulator has blocked Polymarket after concluding that the platform was offering unlicensed betting to residents under the description of a prediction market, according to a notice from the Gaming Supervisory Authority reported by Gaming Intelligence on 16 September and SBC News on 17 September. The authority, a department of the Ministry of Finance, said the order "foiled an attempt to circumvent restrictions on illegal remote gambling".

The method was a test purchase. The regulator's investigators registered an account on Polymarket, deposited funds and placed bets at fixed prices on the results of sporting events, Gaming Intelligence reports. Because Polymarket is not licensed in Lithuania, the authority classed the activity as illegal gambling and applied to the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court, which accepted its finding. "The Supervisory Authority received a decision from the Regional Administrative Court and issued binding instructions to communication service providers to block access to the Polymarket website, and to payment service providers to terminate all payment transactions with the operator of illegal gambling activities, the company Adventure One QSS, Inc.," the LPT said, as quoted by SBC News.

Adventure One QSS is the Panama-registered company that has operated Polymarket's international exchange since 2022, when the platform was barred from serving United States customers under its settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Lithuanian order names it, rather than Polymarket's New York parent, as the operator of the illegal activity. The LPT says the block brings the number of illegal remote gambling sites it has cut off to 2,204.

Where Polymarket Can Still Be Reached in Europe

The Lithuanian action is the latest in a European sequence that began in earnest this year. Spain's DGOJ blocked Polymarket and Kalshi in May; Italy's ADM ordered Polymarket and 292 other domains blocked in July; France's ANJ, Germany, the Netherlands and Hungary have also restricted access, SBC News reports, and South Korean authorities moved to block the site last month after a review of more than a month. The same outlet notes that the platform's European prospects rest on Gibraltar, which has built a regulated prediction-market framework, and on the United Kingdom, where the Financial Conduct Authority is reviewing consumer access to such products.

Lithuania's own market is small and growing. Online gambling drove an 18% rise in first-half gross gaming revenue to €131.5m last year, and the regulator has been willing to fine licensed operators, including Entain's Baltic Bet, as readily as it blocks unlicensed ones. Its enforcement has drawn criticism from the other direction too: over the summer the European Gaming and Betting Association alleged that a Lithuanian fintech, Walletto, had been processing payments for illegal operators, SBC News reports.

The Regulator Did Not Argue About the Product. It Bought It

Most of the European actions against Polymarket have proceeded on legal characterisation: a contract that pays out on the result of a football match is a bet, whatever the interface calls it. Lithuania went a step further and produced the evidence a court cannot read around. Its officials placed sports bets on the platform, at fixed prices, with money, and the administrative court accepted that as unlicensed betting. That is the same approach a gambling regulator takes against any offshore bookmaker, and it is the point: the LPT did not create a prediction-market category and then decide Polymarket fell outside it. It treated the site as the 2,204th illegal bookmaker on its list.

Naming Adventure One Puts the Panama Structure in the Order

The block is addressed to Adventure One QSS, Inc., not to Polymarket Inc. That matters for payments. Payment providers in Lithuania are now instructed to refuse transactions with a named Panamanian company, which is the entity that actually takes European deposits. Polymarket's separation of its regulated United States exchange from its international one was designed to satisfy the CFTC; it also gives every European regulator a specific counterparty to name in a payment-blocking order. Spain and Italy blocked domains. Lithuania blocked the company behind them.

The List Is Now Long Enough to Be a Market Fact

Seven EU member states and South Korea have now restricted access, and the count matters more than any single order. Polymarket's international volumes depend on being reachable, and each block removes a payment corridor as well as a domain. The platform's answer has been to seek regulated homes, in Gibraltar, in the United States, and potentially in Britain if the FCA's review goes its way. Until it finds them, a regulator in a country of fewer than three million people can take it offline with a test account and an afternoon in court, and this week one did.

Lithuania did not rule on what a prediction market is. It placed a bet, won a court order, and moved on to site 2,205.