How Offshore Gambling Flooded India’s Internet After the Real-Money Ban
The Post-Ban Surge
The borderless nature of digital advertising is effectively blunting New Delhi’s legislative agenda, with illegal offshore gambling networks swamping Indian internet users with promotional content despite a sweeping statutory prohibition. Fresh regulatory data reveals that instead of suffocating the illicit market, the implementation of the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act (PROGA) last August was immediately followed by a sharp spike in rogue commercial traffic.
Domestic regulators are finding themselves outpaced. During the eight months leading up to the passage of PROGA in August 2025, monitoring bodies tracked an average of 594 offshore betting advertisements each month. Once the statutory ban on real-money gaming and its promotion took effect, that monthly average jumped to 795. The statutory friction intended to clear the digital space seems to have triggered the opposite reaction, with entities operating outside domestic jurisdiction ramping up their visibility to capture a captive market.
Investigating ASCI’s yearly enforcement casework has opened the door to how major players in the advertising world are exploiting the mainstream digital infrastructure. In FY 2025/2026, approximately 10,000 advertisements were reviewed for violations of national advertisement guidelines, and offshore betting comprised the single largest source of advertiser violations of those detected by ASCI. The majority of these offences (more than 97 per cent) occurred via online channels, primarily through the use of sponsored advertisements utilizing three of the world’s four major social networking sites, which allowed advertisers to circumvent traditional institutional gatekeeping functions.
Influencers and the Enforcement Bottleneck
The mechanics of this push rely on decentralized persuasion rather than traditional display banners. Illicit operations are embedding themselves within domestic internet culture by leveraging local influencers to manufacture a false sense of legitimacy. An evaluation of more than 1,600 influencer-led campaigns showed a near-total non-compliance rate, with 97 percent requiring immediate alteration. Over half of those specific infractions were tied directly to restricted categories, specifically illegal wagering operations.
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This reliance on third-party personalities complicates enforcement. By using local creators, offshore platforms obfuscate their origin, burying illegal solicitations beneath the trusted, familiar feeds of domestic audiences. The resulting ecosystem is one where algorithmic amplification and synthesized credibility make it incredibly difficult for the average consumer to discern a legitimate platform from an outlawed offshore venture.
While the administrative apparatus did manage to flag and escalate nearly 8,000 distinct offshore betting promotions across the calendar year, the sheer volume of incoming data suggests a systemic enforcement bottleneck. The regulatory watchdog saw its overall caseload climb by more than a fifth, stretching resources thin even as other consumer sectors like real estate, personal care, and healthcare also demonstrated rising rates of deceptive copy.
The current legal reality is mismatched against the fluidity of the internet. PROGA was designed to draw a hard line under real-money gaming inside India, yet the infrastructure enforcing it remains largely domestic, while the capital and servers driving the advertisements sit safely outside the country’s legal reach. Until regional enforcement can effectively penalize the digital pipelines and social media platforms hosting these sponsored campaigns, the statutory ban remains a paper wall against a highly profitable, aggressive offshore industry.
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Source: agbrief.com
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