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India’s gambling sector has significantly grown over the last few years. This was especially the case when the pandemic started. During the lockdown period, many people had to find ways to entertain themselves without going out and even find a way to earn money. Some of them found online gambling as a solution.
Based on a study, around 80% of the Indian population gamble at least once a year. When it comes to popular gambling activities, sports betting is very popular. Cricket is mainly the sport that locals would bet on. Online cricket betting on today’s match with 10CRIC is something that many are participating in.
It’s a good thing because major cricket events are year-round and some of them are the Indian Premier League, the T20 Blast, the Big Bash League, and the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. The bottom line is that there are many crickets and other sports events that the locals are betting on the whole year.
Aside from sports betting, online casino gaming is also popular. This is why the majority of online bookies that offer their services in the country also offer real money games. This includes popular Indian games like Teen Patti, Satta Matka, Andar Bahar, and online Rummy.
Indian Online Gambling in Numbers
Last year, Parimatch International released a report that around 40% of the internet users in India gamble. According to the CMO of PMI, Dmitry Belianin, the online gambling industry has grown dramatically in the last few years.
Belianin said, “The current gambling revenue estimates vary from 5 billion to 90 billion USD a year. This applies to online gambling, offline gambling, and cash collection from offline agents. Calculating the real numbers is not quite possible.”
He also explained why this makes a lot of sense. Gambling is not new to Indians. As early as the 7th century BC, Indians have been gambling.
He said, “In some form or the other, it has been part of the culture and has been passed on down to many generations. As time progressed and technological advancements have been made, the iGaming world has also progressed. This makes India the second-largest market for iGaming across the globe.”
Belianin also touched on the subject of regulating the industry in the country. He explained, “It should come with a proper legal infrastructure to monitor the operations. We foresee state-by-state legalization in the next three to five years – the same way the US market has been doing it.”
Status of Online Gambling in India
With Belianin talking about regulating the online gambling sector in India, you’re probably wondering what the status of this activity is in the country. Well, gambling activities in India are regulated by the Public Gaming Act of 1867. Since this is a law that existed before the digital era, it has nothing on any online gambling activities.
Even the Information Technology Act of 2000 has no mention of online betting or casino gaming. This places online gambling activities in the grey area.
Even if only three states have already decided to regulate gambling within their territories, the rest of India can still gamble without getting into any trouble. People outside the states of Goa, Sikkim, and Daman can go online and place their bets on offshore casinos.
However, even if online gambling is neither legal nor illegal on a national level, each state can decide on what they would do about this industry. They can regulate the industry or prohibit it. This is what happened in the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu last year.
With the rise of online gambling activities, the local governments in these states also saw n increase in gambling-related problems. This is why they moved to prohibit online gambling activities within their territories.
Unfortunately for both states, the High Court eventually came into the picture and struck down the amendments they had in place to ban online gaming within their boundaries. According to the High Court, their amendments were unconstitutional as it prohibits people from freely choosing a business or profession.
The High court said that a move to place a wide ban on online gaming activities is too drastic or unnecessary. However, the High Court also said that both states are still free to come up with a solution to fight the problems they are seeing that surround online gambling.
That said, it is likely that Tamil Nadu and Karnataka will still make a move to lessen the risks of this activity. For now, we can only wait to see what both local governments will do and if more states will regulate or prohibit gambling activities.
- Chris Costigan, Gambling911.com
