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A report by a digital affairs think tank has found that the scale of illegal online gambling in India is “immense” and expanding, with four foreign platforms alone attracting 1.6bn visits between them in three months.
The nonprofit Digital India Foundation report released this week said that foreign operators are easily bypassing government measures such as website blocking and compliance advisories targeting illegal advertising.
These “illegal operators continue to thrive, using advanced digital marketing tactics, seamless payment processing, and mirror websites to evade enforcement”, it said.
The report alleged that the four foreign operations included in its study – Parimatch, Stake, 1xBet and Batery Bet – maintain “multiple mirror websites to circumvent regulatory takedowns”, suggesting that “the true scale of the illegal market is significantly higher than anticipated”.
“The illegal betting and gambling operators in India have successfully established a dominant digital presence in the absence of adequate external deterrents,” it said.
The report called on the Indian government to emulate jurisdictions that combat money laundering and terrorism financing by executing multiple lines of attack on illegal marketing and payments conduits.
“India must shift from the current fragmented enforcement strategy to a comprehensive ecosystem-based approach that effectively disrupts the key enablers … this includes curbing digital media channels that drive user acquisition for these platforms, tightening financial regulations to block illicit transactions, and enhancing enforcement mechanisms via a whitelist/blocklist to sustain long-term disruption.”
Without such intervention, India’s illegal gambling market, estimated at $100bn in a November 2024 study by the Think Change Forum think tank, will expand by 30 percent a year on the back of growing connectivity, technological advances and “regulatory uncertainty”, the report said.
The report said that highly effective marketing and referral programs generated almost 1.1bn in visits involving users’ direct entry of the four platforms’ URLs over the three-month period.
Referral traffic from pornography websites, affiliates, sports promotions and video streaming platforms amounted to 248m visits, while “organic search traffic” guided by ranked search results and social media and communication platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram delivered around 184m and 43m visits, respectively.
“While major digital platforms prohibit betting and gambling-related promotions, enforcement is highly inconsistent,” the report said.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies, international wallets and mule accounts are common tools in undertaking bank-registered Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions, a massive network among numerous payments channels that help to sustain illegal operator activity, it said.
Examples of such uncertainty in recent years include a government failure to follow through with tighter rules on UPI transactions involving gambling operations, and its withdrawal of an initiative allowing the online skill gaming segment to self-regulate.
However, some regulatory progress emerged last month when the Advertising Standards Council of India signed a memorandum of understanding with three gaming peak bodies to identify and report illegal advertising to enforcement agencies.
Parimatch and 1xBet have been in the sights of India’s enforcement officials for some time.
Tax officials in 2023 accused Cyprus-based Parimatch of using cryptocurrency to remit earnings from the underground India market, following the arrest of an alleged Parimatch director earlier in the year and an associated payments company director.
1xBet, meanwhile, is under investigation by police in the Karnataka state capital of Bengaluru for allegedly streaming a major cricket tournament without permission from broadcasting rights-holder Star India.
The online gambling company is also under renewed scrutiny for allegedly hiring online gambling promoter and actress Urvashi Rautela, among other high-profile celebrities, to promote its wares in defiance of repeated government warnings to the entertainment industry.
