Indonesia Blocks Polymarket as Part of Online Gambling Crackdown

Indonesia has blocked access to Polymarket as authorities continue their wider campaign against online gambling and offshore betting platforms.

The decision came shortly after the prediction market attracted attention for allowing users to wager on whether Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would leave office before the end of his term.

Indonesia’s Communications and Digital Ministry said Polymarket had been classified as an online gambling service under national law. Gambling is illegal in Indonesia, and officials have been stepping up enforcement against platforms that offer betting products to local users.

Alexander Sabar, director general of digital space supervision at the ministry, said the government would not allow any form of online gambling to operate in the country.

He said prediction markets involve monetary betting and speculation on uncertain events, which puts them in conflict with Indonesian laws and regulations.

The ministry issued its statement late on Friday, May 22. According to the state news agency ANTARA, the ministry presented the block as a safeguard for Indonesians, with young internet users singled out, and said it would also restrict other services suspected of running prediction-market style betting. It urged Indonesians not to take part in speculative digital betting, including products built on crypto assets, warning that they could lose money and would be breaking the law. The Jakarta Post noted that the statement itself did not mention the market on the president.

Prabowo Prediction Market Triggers Attention

Polymarket came under scrutiny in Indonesia after a market appeared on the platform asking when Prabowo would be “out as president.”

Prabowo took office in October 2024, and his current presidential term is scheduled to run until 2029.

The market reportedly appeared on May 21, one day after Prabowo announced plans to centralise control over several major Indonesian commodity exports, including coal and palm oil. The policy had already drawn attention from investors monitoring the government’s economic direction.

According to reports, the market had attracted more than $51,000 in wagers and showed an implied probability of around 11% that Prabowo would not remain in office through the year.

The shorter-dated contracts were priced far lower. Casino.org reported that, as of May 25, traders gave only a 1% chance of Prabowo leaving office by May 31 and 2% by June 30, with total volume on the question at $51,531. Prabowo won the 2024 presidential election with around 59% of the vote.

The ministry said it was also reviewing social media accounts connected to Polymarket as part of its enforcement response.

Indonesia Targets Offshore Gambling Platforms

Indonesia has been trying for years to restrict online gambling, much of which is operated through offshore websites. Although authorities have repeatedly blocked gambling domains, the illegal market has continued to expand.

Indonesians reportedly lost an estimated 327 trillion rupiah, equal to around $18.4 billion, through online gambling in 2023.

More recent figures from the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) suggest enforcement is having some effect. In its 2025 report, released on January 29, 2026, the agency said funds linked to online gambling totalled Rp286.84 trillion (about $18.3 billion) across 422.1 million transactions in 2025, a 20% fall from Rp359.81 trillion in 2024. Deposits dropped to Rp36.01 trillion from Rp51.3 trillion, although 12.3 million people were still recorded making gambling deposits through banks, e-wallets and QRIS payments.

The crackdown extends well beyond website blocking. A national police task force set up on November 4, 2024, drawing on 22 ministries and agencies, had handled 1,271 cases and named 1,456 suspects by May 2025. In May 2026, police arrested 321 foreign nationals, most of them Vietnamese, over at least 75 alleged online gambling operations. Nine days before the Polymarket decision, Communications and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid said nearly 200,000 Indonesian children had been exposed to online gambling, around 80,000 of them under the age of 10.

Officials have presented the Polymarket block as part of a broader effort to protect citizens from unlicensed betting products and speculative gambling platforms.

Polymarket allows users to trade contracts linked to future events, including politics, elections, sports and other outcomes. Users can profit if their prediction is correct, while contract prices reflect the market’s perceived probability of each result.

The platform was launched in 2020 and has become one of the most visible companies in the prediction market sector. Its crypto-based structure has also attracted regulatory attention in multiple jurisdictions.

In the United States, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission settled charges against Polymarket's New York-based operator, Blockratize Inc., in January 2022. The regulator found the site had been offering unregistered event-based binary options since around June 2020, ordered a $1.4 million civil penalty and required it to wind down markets that did not comply with the Commodity Exchange Act.

Prediction Markets Face Global Pressure

Indonesia is not the only country taking action against Polymarket. More than 30 countries have reportedly banned or restricted access to the platform.

In Southeast Asia, Singapore added Polymarket to its Gambling Regulatory Authority blacklist in January 2025 as part of a broader crackdown on unlicensed online gambling. The platform is also unavailable in Myanmar because of U.S. sanctions.

Sabar pointed to that international trend when explaining the decision. According to ANTARA, he said Singapore, Brazil and India had formally blocked Polymarket, while Taiwan, Thailand, China and Japan had imposed restrictions under their own national laws.

The growing pushback reflects a wider debate over how prediction markets should be regulated. Critics argue that these products can blur the line between gambling and financial trading, creating legal uncertainty.

Concerns have also been raised about market manipulation, insider information and integrity risks. Some reports have pointed to suspicious trading activity involving connected accounts that allegedly profited heavily from wagers tied to sensitive geopolitical events.

In one recent example cited by The Diplomat, nine linked Polymarket accounts were reported to have made more than $2.4 million betting on the timing of U.S. military action in the Middle East, with a win rate of around 98%.

U.S. States Also Question Prediction Markets

The regulatory debate is also active in the United States. Several U.S. states have argued that prediction markets offering sports-related contracts may amount to unlicensed gambling under local laws.

Supporters of prediction markets generally argue that these products should be regulated as financial contracts rather than gambling. They say markets can provide useful information about public expectations and future events.

However, regulators in several countries remain cautious, especially when users are staking money on political, sporting or real-world outcomes.

For Indonesia, the issue appears more straightforward. Authorities say Polymarket’s activity involves betting on uncertain events, which falls under the country’s gambling prohibition.

The block signals that Indonesia intends to continue taking a strict approach toward offshore gambling platforms and prediction markets that target or attract local users.