Gambling and Casino Advertising in India After the 2025 Act: What Is Actually Left

Almost every article about gambling and casino marketing in India is out of date, and the ones that are not out of date are usually offshore operators pretending the law does not apply to them. The position changed completely in August 2025 and hardened again in 2026, so it is worth stating plainly before anything else.

Advertising an online money game in India is a criminal offence. Not a platform policy violation, not a grey area, not something that a Malta licence or a surrogate brand resolves. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, passed by Parliament on 21 August 2025, prohibits offering, advertising and facilitating financial transactions for online money games, whether they involve skill, chance or both.

What the Act actually says

The three prohibitions in the Act operate independently, which is the detail most summaries miss. Offering the game is one offence. Advertising or promoting it is a separate offence. Processing the related financial transactions through banks or payment systems is a third. An agency, a publisher, an influencer or a payment provider can be liable without ever operating a game.

The penalties as reported by the government: advertising a prohibited online money game carries up to two years imprisonment and a fine up to Rs.50 lakh. Offering an online money game carries up to three years and a fine up to Rs.1 crore (MeitY, Act text).

The Act applies across India and reaches online money gaming services offered from outside India but accessible within it. Offshore hosting is addressed in the text rather than left as a loophole.

The Act does not ban online gaming as such. It separates the market into three categories and promotes two of them: e-sports, online social games, and online money games. The first two are recognised and encouraged. Only the third is prohibited.

The 2026 Rules

MeitY notified the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026 on 22 April 2026, in force from 1 May 2026. The Rules establish the Online Gaming Authority of India, drawing representatives from MeitY, Home Affairs, Finance, Information and Broadcasting, Youth Affairs and Sports, and Law and Justice, and set out the classification, registration, user protection and enforcement machinery.

For anyone building in the permitted categories, this is the important part: there is now a registration mechanism for e-sports and online social games. That is a route to operate and market legitimately, and it did not exist before 2026.

What the platforms did in response

Google updated the India country section of its Gambling and games policy from 21 January 2026 to align with the Act (Google gambling and games policy). Where India had previously allowed certification-gated real money gaming and fantasy sports advertising, only limited formats now remain.

Meta's gambling authorisation requires evidence that the activity is appropriately licensed by a regulator in the target market, and Meta explicitly disclaims responsibility for how authorised advertisers comply with local law (Meta Transparency Center). With no lawful licensing route for online money games in India, there is nothing to submit.

Snap requires proof of current licence or registration from the regulator in each jurisdiction targeted, and names the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany and Spain among permitted markets. India is not among them. TikTok does not operate in India at all.

Why the surrogate route does not work

The standard offshore playbook is a news or sports information brand carrying the betting brand's name and colours, promoted by influencers, with the actual gambling one click away on a domain that is not advertised directly. That was already contested before the Act. It is now squarely inside a provision that reaches advertising, promotion and facilitation rather than just operation.

Enforcement is not theoretical. ASCI reported offshore betting as the single largest category of advertising violations it reviewed in FY26, at 72.14% of all ads found in breach, flagging more than 4,500 violations and escalating them to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre and the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (Storyboard18).

ASCI's own guidelines for real money gaming advertising, which predate the Act and still frame the standards for anything adjacent, require a financial risk disclaimer occupying no less than 20% of print advertisement space, prohibit presenting games as an income opportunity, and prohibit advertising to or depicting minors. They also specifically prohibit surrogate advertising in sectors where direct advertising is illegal.

What is still lawful to market in India

This is where the useful commercial conversation actually is, and almost nobody writes about it because it is less dramatic than the ban.

• E-sports. Recognised and promoted under the Act, with a registration mechanism under the 2026 Rules. Tournaments, teams, platforms, merchandise, sponsorship and streaming are all advertisable.
• Online social games. Games with no money stake and no monetary prize. Card games, casual games, puzzle games, and casino-format social games where nothing of monetary value is staked or won. Note the trap that catches operators internationally: if virtual prizes can be traded on secondary markets for value, platforms apply the gambling policy instead, and the same logic will apply to the Indian classification.
• Game development and infrastructure. Studios, engines, payment and anti-fraud tooling, hosting, analytics. B2B marketing in the sector is unaffected.
• Skill-based games with no money stake. The Act removed the skill versus chance distinction as a defence for money games. It did not touch games where no money is staked.

For Indian operators who want to market real money products, the lawful path is outward: a properly licensed operation targeting a market that licenses it, run through the certification routes on Google, Meta and Snap. That is a genuine business, it is what our US and global gambling paid media guide covers, and it is an entity, licensing and banking exercise before it is a media one.

If you are an agency or publisher

The exposure runs to you, not only to the operator. Three practical positions worth adopting in writing:

1. No real money gaming, betting or casino work targeting India, in any structure, including surrogate and news-brand arrangements.
2. For offshore clients targeting other markets, licence evidence for each target jurisdiction on file before a campaign is built, and client-owned ad accounts rather than agency manager accounts. Google now revokes gambling certificates at manager account level where a significant volume has been revoked across managed accounts, so one client can cost you the category.
3. Influencer and affiliate contracts that name the Act and put the promotion prohibition in the deliverables clause. Creators are inside the advertising offence, and most of them do not know it.

Related

For the wider framework across categories and platforms, see the restricted products advertising guide. For what the black hat and grey hat terminology in this space actually refers to, see black hat, grey hat and dark area performance marketing.

We work with licensed operators targeting markets where their product is lawful, through restricted vertical advertising. We do not take on real money gaming aimed at India, and we will say so on the first call.