India gamblers may disregard ban on real-money iGaming

Last month, India’s Parliament banned real-money iGaming. The move followed data estimating that 450 million people — a third of the population — lose $2.3 billion a year on the wagers.

The 2025 Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill criminalises online play for money and the promotion and advertising of same. It bars banks and payment providers from processing transactions for cash games. Penalties include fines and up to five years in jail.

Proponents of the ban cited the risks associated with gambling, including financial losses. India Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said iGaming providers “exploit users with false promises of profit”. The bill protects the public “and avoids a big evil that is creeping into society”, he said.

Critics counter that the law will simply send punters to unregulated offshore sites, a view echoed by those players interviewed by Agence France Presse (AFP). “We have done this before and will do it again,” said one player, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We will go back to our old ways of making money.”

Fantasy sports fan Adarsh Sharma predicted offshore will “see a sudden boom” as Indian bettors migrate to illegal sites, using virtual private networks and proxy credit cards to make transactions.

“A habit once formed cannot be broken easily,” Sharma told AFP. “It is an addiction, and people will find ways to gamble.”

Constitutional challenges ahead

The addictive quality of real-money games is just what concerns Vaishnaw.

“The middle class loses all their earnings,” he said in a 21 August interview with ABP News. “One after another, incidents are coming up where a family member ends life by suicide.”

Vaishnaw pointed out that the law also calls for the promotion and development of non-gambling games, including esports and online social games.

Meanwhile, Indian gaming company A23 has challenged the law, slamming it as state-run paternalism. More litigation could follow, said Meghna Bal, director of New Delhi think tank Esya Centre. Article 19(1)(g) of the Indian constitution guarantees the right “to practise any profession or carry on any occupation, trade or business”.

The law “fails the test of proportionality”, Bal told TechCrunch. “Instead of safeguarding consumers, it dismantles compliant onshore companies while opening the door wider for illegal offshore betting platforms that are the real source of financial harm.”

Rohit Kumar, founding partner of public policy firm Quantum Hub, objected that the bill was pushed through virtually without debate. “Regulation is necessary, but abrupt moves like this undermine India’s reputation as a stable, predictable investment destination,” he said. “If concerns existed, the government should have signalled them clearly from the outset.”

Derailing a multibillion-dollar industry

Meanwhile, the economic consequences of the ban on fantasy sports are undeniable. Dream11, India’s leading fantasy sports platform with 260 million users, has pulled out of a $43 million sponsorship deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India. And while no layoffs are in the works, CEO Harsh Jain said the firm is bracing for a 95% drop in revenue.

“The entire industry was caught off guard,” Jain said of the sudden legislation. “We first heard about the bill in the news on a Tuesday. By Wednesday, it was tabled in Lok Sabha, Thursday in Rajya Sabha, and by Friday the president had signed it into law. It was a complete shock.”

He added that the firm does not plan to mount a legal challenge to the new law but lamented that, in hindsight, the industry failed to strongly self-regulate.

“Multiple self-regulatory bodies were proposed, but we never united under one,” Jain told Storyboard18. “A few of us signed a code of ethics six months ago. But we should have done much more earlier to protect consumers and keep bad operators out.”

He agreed that the ban is likely to increase patronage of illegal sites. “Whenever something is banned, the black market usually grows. We’re already seeing offshore betting firms offering aggressive discounts to Indian users. The government has said they’ll crack down on such operators, and I hope they succeed. But on the internet, it’s much harder to control.”