The writing is on the wall for India’s real-money gaming comapnies.
Dream11 is preparing to shut down its real-money gaming business after the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025 was passed in both houses of Parliament. The law is a blanket ban on real money gaming in India.
Dream11 has briefed employees, staff and contractual employees of its transition plan, NDTV reports. After shutting down its real-money gaming arms, Dream11 will focus on its other verticals like Fancode, DreamSetGo, Dream Game Studios and investments like Willow TV and Cricbuzz.
Like Dream11, Zupee too is preparing to shut down its real-money fantasy games business. Zupee will however remain operational for free games like Ludo Supreme, Ludo Turbo, Snakes and Ladders and Trump Card Mania.
The new legislation, which was passed in Lok Sabha on 20th August, and on Rajya Sabha on 21st August, prohibits all forms of online betting and gambling, including fantasy sports, poker, rummy, lotteries, and other money-based games, irrespective of whether they are based on skill, chance, or a combination of both. The government said that the move aims to protect India’s youth from predatory real-money gaming applications that lure players with misleading promises of monetary returns, leading to addiction, financial losses, and in extreme cases, even suicides.
Once the bill is signed by the President, it’ll become law. Once it is law, offering such games would incur imprisonment of up to two years or fine of Rs. 1 crore. Advertising such games would incur the same imprisonment term or a fine of Rs. 50 lakh. Subsequent convictions would incur larger penalties and increased imprisonment sentences.
As such, real-money gaming companies seem to be preparing to shutter their businesses before the law comes into effect. There will be implications for India’s startup space from the new laws. Online gaming companies like Dream11 weren’t only very valuable — Dream11 was last valued at $8 billion — but they were among the rare Indian startups that were profitable. The ban will mean that these companies will have to pivot their operations quite dramatically in the coming days, or shut down entirely. This could mean the loss of jobs, and also substantial loss of tax revenues to the government.
The government, however, has chosen to move in the broader interests of society. It had anyway been a thin line between “games of skill” and “games of chance” — it was hard to argue how fantasy leagues weren’t just betting operations disguised as so-called “games of skill”. Many states including Odisha, Telangana, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Sikkim had already banned fantasy games, and FIRs had been registered against founders in places like Karnataka. The central government has now imposed a blanket ban on these games. But one wonders if the ban could’ve come sooner — had the government been clear about its policies around such games, all the disruption that will now be caused by shutting down a large industry could’ve been avoided.