Polymarket will remain blacklisted in Romania after the court sided with the gambling regulator in a legal battle instigated by the prediction markets platform.

Vlad-Cristian Soare, President of the ONJN gambling authority, announced on LinkedIn that a court appeal filed by Polymarket against the decision to ban it as an unlicensed gambling provider has been rejected.

Back in October, the ONJN reported that it has been keeping a close eye on Polymarket’s domestic activity, with Romania’s Presidential elections in May attracting more than $600m (£455m) in trades on the platform, and an additional $15m for the Mayor elections in Bucharest.

Your word against mine

Prediction markets platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which are the two biggest players in the space, have always argued that they do not offer gambling products, but rather ‘events contracts’ – where users wager against each other on an outcome of an event. This can be anything – from the results of a political election, to the winner of award shows like the Grammys. 

The sentiment that these contracts are financial instruments rather than gambling products has found solid ground in the fact that prediction markets are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the US – the home of Polymarket and Kalshi.

However, this view is certainly not shared across the rest of the world, where gambling regulators have remained steadfast in their conviction that these platforms constitute as gambling.

New Zealand, for example, has directly banned Kalshi and Polymarket as they have not been licensed to offer gambling in the country. Such conclusions can also be widely seen across Europe.

Germany, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Hungary, Portugal, and now Romania have all taken action to ban prediction markets from operating locally. In the UK, the Gambling Commission has stated that if a prediction markets platform is to ever launch domestically, it will certainly fall under the remit of the gambling regulator.

Still, a recent decision in Gibraltar to licence a prediction markets platform as a B2C betting intermediary could be taken as a sign that Europe can still be an entry point for these platforms that is more accessible than many believe.

Soare, however, has remained adamant that the appeal rejection in Romania will add another brick to the defense wall that 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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