Indonesia’s illegal online gambling turnover drops 57% as crackdown starts to bite

Indonesia’s “war” on illegal online gambling is showing concrete results, with new PPATK figures indicating that the value of transactions has fallen to Rp155 trillion (about US$9.3bn) – a year-on-year drop of 57 per cent – and millions fewer people now using offshore betting sites.

Indonesia’s Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) has reported a sharp contraction in the financial flows linked to illegal online gambling, calling the latest data “evidence that enforcement is working”. According to figures presented this week and cited by government officials, the cumulative value of online gambling transactions from January through the third quarter of 2025 reached around Rp155–155.4 trillion (approximately US$9.2–9.3bn). That compares with roughly Rp359–360 trillion in the same period a year earlier, representing a decrease of about 57 per cent in turnover.

The decline in money flows is mirrored by a steep drop in participation. PPATK data show that the number of Indonesians involved in online gambling fell from around 9.7 million in 2024 to about 3.1 million in 2025, suggesting that not only high-value accounts but also mass-market players are being pushed out of the illegal ecosystem. Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid welcomed the figures as “a collective achievement” for the state and the public, arguing that they show concrete progress in protecting vulnerable citizens from the social and financial harms linked to online betting.

Officials credit the turnaround to a coordinated enforcement strategy combining content takedowns, financial blocking and cross-border cooperation. Since late 2024, the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs has removed well over 1.3 million pieces of gambling content – including more than 1.1 million websites and around 127,000 links and posts on social media – and continues to run rapid-response sweeps that target new domains as they appear. In parallel, PPATK has frozen or flagged tens of thousands of bank and e-wallet accounts suspected of channelling betting funds, forwarding cases to law enforcement as part of a wider effort to disrupt money-laundering and fraud networks tied to illegal casinos.

Despite the sharp fall in activity, authorities warn that the threat has not disappeared. PPATK estimates that, at its peak, Indonesia’s illegal online gambling market was moving hundreds of trillions of rupiah each year, with a large share of funds flowing offshore and many users earning less than IDR 5 million per month. Hafid has pledged to keep tightening both access and payment channels, including through cooperation with infrastructure providers such as Cloudflare and local fintechs, to ensure the recent gains are not reversed.

For Indonesia’s broader digital ecosystem – from banks and e-wallets to telecoms and content platforms – the latest numbers are a sign that sustained, data-driven enforcement can materially shrink the illegal gambling economy. But policymakers and regulators also acknowledge that continuous monitoring, AI-based detection and international coordination will be essential if the country is to prevent online gambling networks from simply re-routing traffic and rebuilding their customer base in new corners of the internet.