Romania’s ban on Polymarket will remain in effect

(AsiaGameHub) –   Polymarket will remain on Romania’s blacklist after a court ruled in favor of the country’s gambling regulator in a legal dispute initiated by the prediction markets platform.

Vlad-Cristian Soare, President of the ONJN gambling authority, announced on LinkedIn that Polymarket’s court appeal against its ban as an unlicensed gambling provider has been rejected.

Last October, the ONJN reported it had been closely monitoring Polymarket’s domestic operations. Romania’s May Presidential elections drew over $600 million (£455 million) in trades on the platform, with an additional $15 million in activity related to Bucharest’s Mayor elections.

Your word against mine

Top prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi—the two largest players in the space—have long argued they do not offer gambling products, but rather “event contracts” where users wager against each other on the outcome of an event. These events can range from political election results to winners of award shows like the Grammys.

The claim that these contracts are financial instruments instead of gambling products is supported by the fact that prediction markets are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the U.S.—the home country of Polymarket and Kalshi.

However, this view is not shared globally; gambling regulators elsewhere have stood firm in their belief that these platforms are considered gambling.

For example, New Zealand has directly banned Kalshi and Polymarket for lacking gambling licenses in the country. Similar stances are widespread across Europe.

Germany, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Portugal, and now Romania have all taken action to ban prediction markets from operating locally. In the UK, the Gambling Commission has stated that any prediction market platform launching domestically would fall under its regulatory scope.

Still, a recent decision in Gibraltar to license a prediction market platform as a B2C betting intermediary could signal that Europe remains a more accessible entry point for these platforms than many think.

Soare, however, has maintained that Romania’s appeal rejection adds another layer to the defensive wall European regulators are building against prediction markets.

He concluded: “There has been a lot of speculation around this decision. In reality, the stake was not and is not only Polymarket. The real stake is to protect the legal framework that regulates gambling and prevent a dangerous loophole: redefining betting under the seemingly harmless name of ‘prediction platform’.

“Today’s decision is, therefore, more than a solution in a specific dispute. It is a signal at European level that the law cannot be circumvented by artifices to reclassify activities that, after all, fall within the sphere of gambling.”

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