We study the ground state of a large number N of 2D extended anyons in an external magnetic field. We consider a scaling limit where the statistics parameter α is proportional to N−1 when N → ∞, which allows the statistics to be seen as a “perturbation around the bosonic end.” Our model is that of bosons in a magnetic field interacting through long-range magnetic potential generated by magnetic charges carried by each particle, smeared over discs of radius R. Our method allows us to take R → 0 not too fast at the same time as N → ∞ : R = N−1/4+ɛ. We use the information theoretic version of the de Finetti theorem of Brandão and Harrow to justify the so-called “average field approximation”: the particles behave like independent, identically distributed bosons interacting via a self-consistent magnetic field.