With Bollywood and cricketers endorsing them, gambling sites are betting big

On March 13, former captain of the Indian men’s cricket team Virender Sehwag launched a cricket tournament in Delhi that will see several former stars participate in a nine-day long T20 tournament in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad starting on March 22. Such leagues, featuring former international cricketers, have become popular, but what’s alarming is that cricket has become a soft target for betting and gambling companies who double as sports websites.

In recent weeks, two betting brands, Khiladi and SkyExch.net have associated themselves with ‘legends cricket’, featuring past cricketers. SkyExch.net is listed as an online betting site, and sports betting is legally not allowed in India. By becoming the title sponsor of a cricket tournament in Doha, SkyExch.net has found a way to showcase its services, betting included. Its sports news website, like so many others, appears to be a decoy.

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Similarly, Khiladi, a betting exchange that has actor Shahid Kapoor as its brand ambassador, are the title sponsors of a league that will be played by Sehwag, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh, Praveen Kumar, et al, to garner some extra traffic ahead of the lucrative IPL season — a favourite destination of bookies and gamblers.

Sports has become the vehicle of choice for betting companies. Internationally well-known platforms such as Betway, Bet365, Pari Match, Dafabet, Fairplay, and 1xbet are heavily embedded with major tournaments and media houses in India, and the way these offshore betting companies have operated freely within the Indian ecosystem is unimaginable.

From tennis tournaments to the Indian Super League, there is a strong association with these offshore betting companies. Some of India’s finest sportspersons such as Mary Kom, Mithali Raj, and Saina Nehwal are endorsing these brands, while top football teams such as Bengaluru FC and ATK Mohun Bagan have the logos of these betting sites (like Pari Match News) on their jerseys. Endorsement is big business and several Bollywood actors from Ranbir Kapoor to Jacqueline Fernandez, and from Varun Dhawan to Kiara Advani help these sites grab millions of eyeballs. Either these celebrities are naïve, or they are indifferent to what they are endorsing.

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It is interesting to note that many betting sites, including Mahadev Book, are allegedly owned by Saurabh Chandrakar; who is a fugitive wanted by various agencies in India.

While the government has made efforts to stop these betting sites from running their websites, the operators bypass these restrictions and spend big on digital and print advertisements.

The Prime Minister’s Office has acknowledged the evil spread by betting sites operating in India, but has not been able to provide a solution on how to contain surrogate advertising. In a reply, not yet made public but accessed by this author, sent by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to a letter from a prominent gaming lawyer pointing out the flaws in the draft amendments to the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, 2021 in relation to online gaming, the MeitY says the process to regulate the gaming industry is a work in progress.

It is no secret that the government is losing millions of rupees in taxes since the betting companies use various ‘shell’ companies to transact with customers and bluff the system. The All-India Gaming Federation, in a letter to the PMO, says the GST loss has been no less than Rs 10,000 crore in the last three years. Insiders say that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The online gaming business in India is still in the realms of the unknown. There may be an estimated 700 million gamers in India by 2025, but the lack of knowledge to what constitutes a game of chance and a game of skill is the biggest pitfall. Even the Indian courts have not been able to distinguish clearly between the two. This is where the betting sites are cashing in on.

By promising 1,300 percent welcome bonus, 24x7 customer service, promotions, quick money withdrawal, and low data consumption, these sites attract the public easily. Also, by using words like ‘fully licensed’, ‘officially listed’, and ‘Asia’s No. 1’, they con the gullible.

Interestingly, the seemingly ‘legitimate’ gaming operators in India are a fractured lot. There is a serious trust deficit in their business operations, evident in that there are at least three private gaming federations, each proclaiming its authority.

Under these circumstances, India’s biggest fantasy sports operator Dream11 is one of the partners in the SkyExch.net-sponsored tournament in Doha. The league is being livestreamed in Dream11-owned app, FanCode. It is pertinent to mention here that Dream11 is the founder of a self-regulatory body, Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS). The FIFS, in its charter, commits to the welfare of gaming industry in India and is morally against offshore betting and gambling sites. Thus, the Dream11 association with SkyExch.net is bewildering.

The government agencies are believed to be at work, but till such time there is proactiveness, transparency, and a will to fight the evil unitedly, betting sites will continue to operate with stealth and ride sports and Bollywood to boost their coffers by bluffing the Indian taxing system.

(Soumitra Bose is a senior journalist and a research scholar)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.