India’s thriving real money games industry has been dealt a body blow by the country’s Parliament.
The Lok Sabha has passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, which seeks a blanket ban on real money gaming in India. The government said the move addresses risks of fraud, money laundering, and terror financing, while encouraging growth of e-sports and skill-based online games.
The legislation 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.
Real money gaming had mushroomed into a massive industry in a few short years. As per July 2025 UPI data, the money being transacted on these online real money games was comparable to items like ““Fast Food Restaurants”, “Drug stores and pharmacies”, and more than the money being spent on bakeries, dairy, and even alcohol shops.
But this popularity had a dark side too. Lots of financially vulnerable Indians were being lured into these real money games, and many were losing large sums of money . This was pushing these already vulnerable sections into debt and bankruptcy.
The government said that while these apps were proving large amounts of tax collection to the government, they still had to be banned if they were a net negative for society. “When faced with a choice between addressing a large social issue and supporting an industry, we will always put the well being of society first,” said Union Minister for IT Ashwani Vaishnaw.
While real money games have been banned, the bill recognises e-sports as a legitimate form of competitive sport in India. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports will frame guidelines and standards for e-sports events, establish training academies and research centres, and launch incentive schemes and awareness programmes. It will also integrate e-sports into broader sports policies in coordination with state governments and federations.
There will be implications for India’s startup space from the move. 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.