The dispute goes back to January 20, 2026, when the KSA ordered Polymarket‘s parent company, Adventure One QSS, to stop serving Dutch users within four weeks or face a weekly fine that could range from€420,000 to €840,000. The regulator said Dutch law only allows betting on sport, so even a license wouldn’t have been an option for Polymarket.
The platform blocked Dutch access by February 18, 2026, one day past the deadline, which the KSA ruled was enough to trigger the full €420,000 fine. However, Adventure One disagreed with the decision, saying the delay was because of the geo-block technology rollout rather than any direct non-compliance, but the KSA rejected that explanation and began collection proceedings.
Adventure One had argued:
“Adventure One QSS Inc. states that this is not negligence, but a known feature of the technology, and that the measures have been implemented as quickly and carefully as possible within the short grace period.”
Polymarket now argues in court that its contracts work like derivatives trading, which should fall under the Dutch Authority for Financial Markets instead of the KSA. Critics have pointed out that if Polymarket wants to be classified as a financial product, the closest comparison is binary options, which are already banned in most of Europe. Dutch users reportedly bet more than $30 million on Polymarket around November 2025’s parliamentary election, and many moved to other prediction platforms once the ban took effect.
