Polymarket Takes Its €420,000 Dutch Penalty to Court, Arguing It Sells Financial Products

Polymarket has confirmed it is challenging the Dutch gambling regulator's order in court, after being charged for blocking Dutch users a day late. Its case is that event contracts belong with the financial markets supervisor, an argument that, if it won, could land it under the Netherlands' indefinite ban on selling binary options to retail clients.

• Polymarket has taken the Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) to court over the penalty order that forced it out of the Dutch market, the company confirmed to Het Financieele Dagblad, which reported the challenge on Sunday 4 October
• The KSA ordered Adventure One QSS Inc., the company named as the owner of polymarket.com, on 20 January to stop offering unlicensed gambling to Dutch users within four weeks, on pain of €420,000 per week up to a maximum of €840,000
• Polymarket says it blocked Dutch users on 18 February, a day after the deadline, so the KSA held that €420,000 had been forfeited and on 19 May moved to collect it
• The KSA rejected Polymarket's objection on 23 June, holding that event betting cannot be licensed in the Netherlands at all; Polymarket argues its contracts are financial products for the Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM)
• No filing date or hearing date has been made public; the case follows blocks in Czechia, Italy and Spain, and ESMA's finding that the largest platforms hold no EU authorisation

Polymarket Confirms It Has Gone to Court

Polymarket is challenging the Dutch ban on its platform in court, the company confirmed to Het Financieele Dagblad (FD), which published the story on Sunday 4 October. According to the FD and NOS, which followed it that evening, the company argues that a prediction market is not a game of chance but a financial product, comparable to futures contracts, that should be supervised by the Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) rather than by the Kansspelautoriteit, the KSA. Under Dutch administrative law, an appeal by a company with no address in the Netherlands goes to the court for the district where the regulator sits, which for the KSA is The Hague.

Neither a filing date nor a hearing date has been published, and the KSA's page on the case still says only that an appeal can be lodged. The objection decision, dated 23 June, allowed six weeks from notification to appeal, which points to a filing over the summer; this weekend is the first time the company has said publicly that it is litigating. An appeal does not suspend the decision, so Polymarket remains barred from Dutch users while the court considers it.

A Ban Missed by One Day

The case file on the KSA's website shows how the regulator built its case. Supervisors using a Dutch IP address opened an account on polymarket.com in July 2025, deposited €10 by card through a Dutch bank in November and bought a $1 "Yes" position on Rob Jetten in the market "Next Prime Minister of the Netherlands". A recheck on 7 January 2026 found the same access. The KSA also noted that the customer service AI chat answered in Dutch and that the Netherlands was not among the excluded countries in the terms of use.

On 20 January the KSA imposed a penalty order on Adventure One QSS Inc., named as the site's owner in its footer and terms of use. It gave four weeks to stop and set a penalty of €420,000 for every week or part of a week in breach, capped at €840,000. The order was published on 17 February, the day the deadline expired. A recheck on 18 February found Dutch users could still take part. Polymarket says it put IP blocking in place that same day; the KSA replied that the deadline had already passed and €420,000 had been forfeited by operation of law, and on 19 May it issued a collection decision because the money had not been paid.

The Regulator's Answer to the Derivatives Argument

In its objection, Polymarket argued that users trade positions with one another on an open-source protocol on the Polygon blockchain, with no house, no prize pot and no chance mechanism of its own, that settlement comes from an external oracle, and that a comparable US platform is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a designated contract market, so that in the Netherlands it would answer to the AFM.

The KSA, chaired by Michel Groothuizen, rejected every ground on 23 June. Dutch law asks whether participants compete for a prize decided by an uncertain event they cannot decisively influence, it said, and who organises the game or funds the prize is irrelevant. Bets on non-sporting events cannot be licensed at all, because the remote gambling decree permits only casino games and bets on sport and horse racing, and Polymarket also offered sports contracts, such as the most gold medals at the 2026 Winter Olympics. How other countries classify prediction markets has no bearing on Dutch law, the regulator added, listing ten where the site is banned, from Argentina and Australia to Hungary and Spain. It also quoted Polymarket's own help pages, which describe a prediction market as "a platform where people can bet on the outcome of future events".

Winning the Classification Argument Would Not Win the Market

Polymarket is asking the court to move it from one Dutch regulator to the other, but neither route leads back to Dutch customers. As gambling, its political and economic contracts cannot be licensed in the Netherlands even by a licensed operator. As financial instruments, they would generally be derivatives, and the AFM has prohibited marketing, distributing or selling binary options to retail clients in or from the Netherlands since 19 April 2019, for an indefinite period. The European Securities and Markets Authority made the same point in September: where event contracts are derivatives they fall under national binary option bans, and the largest platforms hold no EU authorisation in any case. The lawsuit is better read as part of the strategy Polymarket has been pursuing in London and Brussels, where a ruling that its products are finance would be worth more as a precedent than as a route back into one market.

The Penalty Order Worked Where Fines Often Do Not

A penalty of €420,000 a week, which the KSA set with reference to the roughly €800,000 a licensed operator spends to enter the market and again each year to stay compliant, produced a geoblock a day after the deadline, by Polymarket's own account, without a court order or an ISP blocking regime. The KSA chairman has complained that fines on offshore operators often go unpaid, and this one too was unpaid in May. The difference is that Polymarket wants something from European regulators, and a company lobbying for financial authorisation cannot be seen ignoring a national order. That leverage is specific to prediction markets that seek legitimacy, and will not transfer to anonymous offshore casinos.

The Court's Answer Will Travel

The KSA's decision leans on Dutch case law built against online casinos and sportsbooks, and the appeal appears to be the first time a Dutch court has been asked whether an event-contract exchange offers a game of chance. Several European regulators that have acted, from Prague to Madrid, have used blocking lists and precautionary orders rather than full decisions that a court then tests. A reasoned judgment from The Hague, whichever way it goes, would give them something most of their orders lack, and would be read closely in the Dutch market and by every regulator now deciding what to do about the same contracts.

Polymarket has been charged €420,000 for leaving the Netherlands a day late, and is now asking a court to call its product something other than gambling. Even if it wins that argument, the Netherlands has a rule waiting for it on the other side.