Online gaming is on, online betting is not

The Online Gaming Act addresses ambiguity by replacing the older skill-versus-chance inquiry with a money/stakes-plus-enrichment test

- SHUBHASHIS GANGOPADHYAY & KAVYA VOHRA

THE PROMOTION AND Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, engages directly with a long-standing ambiguity in India’s digital gaming ecosystem.

Its central move is to shift the legal inquiry away from whether a game is based on skill or chance, and towards whether participation involves money or other stakes in expectation of monetary or other enrichment. In doing so, it establishes a classification framework in which online money games are prohibited, while e-sports and online games are separately recognised as permissible categories.

The Act is a significant intervention in India’s online gaming economy. It does not regulate real-money gaming, it prohibits it. Media coverage at the time talked about the large-scale disruption the Act caused in the industry along with the government’s loss of large amounts of revenue obtained from the online money games. All major gaming platforms, Dream11, PokerBaazi, MPL, etc., halted their real-money offerings. The Act was best seen as a contest between two policy narratives: one centred on public health, financial harm, addiction, fraud, and national security; the other centred on investment, innovation, employment, and the earlier legal recognition of skill-based gaming.