South Africa’s bookmakers want prediction markets blocked until regulation catches up

The South African Bookmakers Association (SABA) has asked state regulators to bar citizens from accessing prediction markets, arguing that the platforms raise sports-integrity, money laundering, and tax-collection risks. For high-risk operators, the point is simple: if a jurisdiction treats a product as a grey-market activity, access, payments, and licensing can all get messy fast.

1. SABA says prediction markets should be treated as part of the grey market until there is proper regulation for the vertical. That is not a theoretical complaint; it is a call for regulators to stop local users from accessing the product altogether.
2. The association’s objections are threefold: prediction markets, in its view, threaten sports integrity, create money laundering risks, and could reduce tax revenue. Those are the three pressure points regulators tend to understand quickest, especially when a product starts behaving like betting without being licensed as betting.
3. The article cites a concrete example of demand: South Africans reportedly placed more than $41 thousand on Polymarket tied to the Johannesburg mayoral election. That matters because it shows the category is not just a niche crypto curiosity; people are already using it on local political events.

For PSPs and acquiring teams, the operational takeaway is that prediction markets can land in the same risk bucket as other unlicensed betting-style flows: reputation risk, payment blocking, and sudden policy shifts are all on the table once local industry groups start lobbying for a ban.