India's Gaming Ban Hasn't Reduced Betting — Just Pushed It Offshore

Multi-state survey finds offshore usage at 82–92% post-ban, with daily engagement and spend rising despite 8,376 URL blocks.

Category: iGaming News - India · By Growl Games Editorial Team · Tue May 12 2026 · Updated Thu Jul 23 2026

India's Gaming Ban Hasn't Reduced Betting — Just Pushed It Offshore

Summary
The Numbers
The Payment Rail Problem
Enforcement Activity
Market Scale
What Comes Next
Sources

Summary

With the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026 in force since May 1, the central enforcement question facing the Online Gaming Authority of India (OGAI) is no longer whether real-money gaming is banned but whether the ban can be made to bite. The most credible independent data available so far — multi-state behavioural surveys from CUTS International — finds that the prohibition has shifted Indian users to offshore platforms rather than reducing money-based play, with daily engagement, session lengths, and monthly spending all rising post-ban.

The Numbers

CUTS International's March 9, 2026 multi-state report, "Behavioural Reallocation after the Online Gaming Ban," surveyed 3,000 former real-money gaming users across Delhi NCR, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. Offshore platform usage was recorded at 82% post-ban in Delhi NCR, 83% in Tamil Nadu, and 92% in Maharashtra. In Delhi NCR alone, offshore usage rose from 68.3% pre-ban to 82% post-ban, a 20.1% relative increase. Daily access on offshore platforms jumped from 3.4% to 42.3%, with session lengths frequently extending beyond two hours. A separate January 2026 Tamil Nadu survey by CUTS recorded a 15.2% rise in offshore platform usage. One in four surveyed users in Delhi began using offshore betting apps only after September 1, 2025 — the start of de facto enforcement following the PROGA's enactment. Monthly spend on offshore platforms now exceeds ₹25,000 for a meaningful share of users.

The Payment Rail Problem

The CUTS data shows users continuing to fund offshore accounts through domestic infrastructure — primarily UPI, IMPS, and bank transfers routed through aggregator and mule accounts. The PROG Rules 2026 close part of that gap by making banks and payment institutions directly liable for processing transactions to prohibited platforms, not merely instructable. OGAI now has the authority to issue payment-block orders and penalise institutions that fail to comply. A ₹26 crore betting fraud ring busted in Hyderabad earlier this year illustrated the underlying evasion mechanics: layered UPI handles, IMPS routing, and multiple payment processors used to obscure flows to offshore sites. The Financial Action Task Force has flagged India's gaming-adjacent crypto flows as a separate risk vector, citing offshore virtual asset service providers exploiting regulatory gaps.

Enforcement Activity

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has blocked or actioned 8,376 URLs linked to online betting and gambling as of March 28, 2026, with more than 4,800 of those blocks taking effect after PROGA. The Directorate General of GST Intelligence, in coordination with MeitY, took action against non-compliant offshore operators in March, blocking 357 websites and freezing nearly 2,400 bank accounts. The Enforcement Directorate has linked illegal betting platforms to alleged money laundering, with the Mahadev Betting App probe now reaching ₹1,700 crore in attached assets and seizures including villas in the Burj Khalifa. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 prescribes one to seven years' imprisonment plus fines for unauthorised betting. Yet the response from operators has been immediate domain rotation: legal commentators note offshore mirror sites typically reappear within hours of being blocked.

Market Scale

Industry estimates cited at a September 2025 MediaNama panel placed the Indian offshore gambling market at roughly $20 billion, with tax evasion linked to those flows exceeding $4 billion — itself larger than the pre-ban domestic industry's annual revenues. India's regulated real-money gaming sector was valued at approximately $7 billion before the August 2025 ban. Major domestic operators — including Dream Sports (parent of Dream11), Games24x7, and MPL — have either shifted to free-to-play, restructured, or wound down real-money operations. Dream Sports has split into eight independent units since December and reported over 100 employee exits in March; Head Digital Works (A23) has cited a workforce drop from 606 to 178 and a complete ₹760 crore write-off by foreign investor Clairvest. Industry-wide asset write-downs reached $840 million within 90 days of the ban.

What Comes Next

Two regulatory and judicial tracks will determine the next phase. First, OGAI's earliest formal moves — its initial Negative List of banned games, the speed of payment-block orders, and how banks respond — will indicate whether the new liability regime has operational teeth. Second, the Supreme Court is hearing constitutional challenges to PROGA before a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, with Head Digital Works and other skill-gaming operators arguing the blanket ban violates Article 19(1)(g). Legal counsel for petitioners argue the case is intertwined with the pending Gameskraft batch on state-level competence. Industry voices, including Skill Online Games Institute President Amrit Kiran Singh, have called website-blocking "lazy governance," arguing VPNs, mirror domains, mule accounts, and crypto rails make platform-level enforcement structurally unable to keep pace. CUTS Research Director Amol Kulkarni has framed the policy challenge bluntly: "The prohibition has not resulted in a widespread exit from money-based online gaming. The evidence points to a clear behavioural reallocation toward offshore betting platforms that operate outside India's regulatory oversight." For offshore operators, the data is straightforward — demand has migrated to them — but the legal and payments perimeter around Indian users is hardening at the same time.

Sources

← Back to all articles