Illegal betting and gambling operators have rapidly expanded their footprint in India. Ahead of the introduction of the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill in Lok Sabha today, the All India Gaming Federation (AIGF) sounded a cautionary note. In a letter to Parliament, AIGF warned that if the Bill is passed in its current form, it could push crores of genuine gamers towards illegal betting sites, potentially worsening the very problem the legislation seeks to resolve.
How big is India’s illegal betting problem?
In March 2025, Digital India Foundation released a report that focused on uncovering the scale of India’s illegal betting problem. The findings reveal that despite repeated government actions, offshore gambling platforms still tend to operate at large in India, amassing a huge number of users.
According to the report, just four operators, namely Parimatch, Stake, 1xBet, and Betway, cumulatively recorded 1.6 billion visits between October to December 2024. The report’s figures are considered estimates of website popularity, as their analysis stems from evaluating Google Trends data that excludes traffic from APK files, VPN usage, and other alternative access methods.
Why has government action so far proven to be ineffective?
Researchers behind the report explain that the majority of these platforms use advanced digital marketing tactics and maintain mirror websites to avoid being targeted and wiped about by government enforcement in a single blow.
Their analysis further indicated that just three Parimatch mirrors alone generated an additional 266 million visits for the platform, suggesting the true scale of the illegal market is significantly higher than previously anticipated.
The report further discovered that ads and posts across prominent social media platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp and YouTube drove 42.8 million visits to the four illegal operators in three months. However, these numbers, shadowed by the organic search traffic, accounted for 184 million visits, showcasing the high number of people who regularly frequent these websites without being prompted by social media ads.
While major digital platforms prohibit betting and gambling, these sites continue to generate referral traffic amounting to 247.5 million visits, primarily from promotions on sports and video streaming platforms that drive their user acquisition process.
Possible way forward for India
The report further emphasises the need for India to adopt a comprehensive ecosystem-based approach that effectively disrupts the key enablers sustaining illegal betting and gambling operations.
Researchers tracked policy developments aimed at curbing illegal betting across Norway, the UK, Denmark, Belgium, and the United States before concluding that blocking these sites alone would prove to be ineffective.
‘Countries that combine website blocking with marketing restrictions for illegal betting and gambling, payment blocking, and whitelisting/blocking have achieved greater success, the report noted.
Similar effective measures could include revising financial regulations to curb illegal transactions and improving enforcement through a blocklist system that shuts down the visibility of these sites for Indian audiences.