Centre issues advisory against promotion of online gambling during major sporting events

Noticing a tendency to “spike" promotion of betting and gambling platforms during cricket matches and other major sports events, the Union government on Friday warned media organisations and social media platforms to refrain from showing such advertisements or promotional content or face action.

In its advisory, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said advertisements of gambling/betting platforms not only pose significant financial and socio-economic risk for the consumers, especially youth and children, but have linkages to money laundering networks, thereby threatening the financial security of the country.

Issued by Deputy Director (Digital Media) Kshitij Aggarwal, the advisory also warned that there are high chances of black money being used to pay for such advertisements. It highlighted that the government has recently taken action against a network, which has collected substantial money from users of gambling apps and subsequently funnelled the funds out of India.

The advisory said certain media entities, including advertisement intermediaries and social media platforms, have been allowing direct and indirect promotional content during major sporting events, including cricket tournaments.

"It is also observed that there is a tendency to spike promotion of such betting and gambling platforms during a major sporting event, especially cricket, and one such important international event is beginning in a few days from now," it said.

The advisory comes ahead of the the Asia Cup, involving cricket teams in the continent, which is scheduled to begin on August 30. The World Athletics Championship is presently happening while the World Cup Cricket is scheduled for October.

Against this backdrop, the Ministry has advised all stakeholders, including media entities, online advertisement intermediaries and social media platforms to “immediately refrain from showing such advertisements or promotional content in any form whatsoever, failing which the government would be constrained to take appropriate action under various statutes”.

The Ministry had earlier issued advisories thrice between June 2022 and April this year clearly mentioning that betting and gambling are illegal activities and their advertisements on any media platform falls foul of various statutes.