The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 prohibits advertising online money games as a separate offence from offering them, and it reaches anyone who makes, causes, aids, abets, induces, or is "otherwise involved" in such promotion. Passed on 22 August 2025, the statute imposes up to two years' imprisonment and fines reaching ₹50 lakh for advertising violations, while the separate offence of offering or facilitating online money games carries steeper penalties: three years and ₹1 crore. The government described the law as prohibiting advertising, promotion, and facilitation of online money games without distinguishing between these activities in terms of enforcement priority.
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The Ban Is Broader Than App Store Removals
The statute's architecture matters. Section 6 forbids "any advertisement" that directly or indirectly promotes or induces play in any online money game, covering games of chance, games of skill, and mixed games. Section 7 separately prohibits fund transfers for such games. Section 9 attaches distinct penalties to each: the advertising offence caps at two years and ₹50 lakh, the fund-facilitation offence at three years and ₹1 crore. This separation is deliberate. An operator might cease offering games to Indian users while promotional material continues to circulate, or a payment processor might handle transactions for a platform that no longer advertises. Each party faces exposure under their own section.
Reuters reported on the day of passage that the bill prohibited "harmful" online money gaming services, advertisements, and related financial transactions as a tripartite structure. The PIB summary from 21 August 2025 confirmed that offering or facilitating online money games can lead to imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of up to ₹1 crore, while advertising attracts the lighter but still substantial two-year, ₹50 lakh maximum. The government reiterated that the Act prohibits promotion and facilitation, suggesting no softening of enforcement scope since passage.
What "Making or Causing" an Advertisement Actually Covers
Section 6's language is where liability expands beyond obvious parties. The prohibition covers persons who "make, cause to be made, aid, abet, induce, or otherwise be involved in the making or causing to be made any advertisement." This is not a list of synonyms for the operator. It describes a chain: the creative agency that produces the content, the media buyer who places it, the influencer who delivers it, the platform that hosts it, and potentially the individual who shares it onward.
A Ministry of Information and Broadcasting advisory from 25 August 2023, predating the Act but informing its approach, treated "surrogate" promotion as a form of advertising. This included content that appears to be an online game or share of an online game but is not a permissible online game. The 2023 advisory's framework—defining disguised promotion as advertising regardless of surface content—carries into the 2025 statute's broader prohibition.
Trilegal, in a 9 September 2025 analysis, noted that the Act extends to "other promotional activity" including referral codes, gameplay showcases, coupons, and affiliate links. This reading of Section 6 suggests that the "otherwise involved" catch-all was drafted precisely to capture promotional mechanisms that do not resemble traditional advertising. A streamer displaying wins, a user posting a discount code, a forum member embedding an affiliate link: each potentially falls within the statutory language depending on interpretation.
The Surrogate Advertising That Did Not Stop
Surrogate promotion explains why certain brand presences persisted after formal advertising ceased. The 2023 advisory identified the pattern: a brand associated with an online money game appears in content that technically concerns a separate product or service. A jersey sponsorship becomes a "fan engagement platform." A betting app becomes a "sports analytics tool." The 2025 Act's prohibition of indirect promotion, and its specific inclusion of inducement, targets this evasion.
The practical effect includes changes in broadcast cricket coverage, where team sponsorships and on-screen branding from gaming operators were previously common. Without verified documentation of specific contractual terminations or app store removals tied to the Act, the observable change is described rather than quantified: the prominent placement of betting brands has diminished, while the underlying corporate structures often remain in place through alternative branding. Whether this constitutes compliance or continuation through substitution has not been tested in a reported decision.
Where Liability Falls in Practice
The statute creates multiple exposure points. The advertiser—typically the operator or its marketing arm—faces the base offence. Anyone who "causes" the advertisement, which courts may interpret to include contractual enablers like leagues accepting sponsorship, sits in the same section. Financial institutions processing payments for promoted games face Section 7's three-year, ₹1 crore maximum. The PIB summary's description of "facilitating" online money games suggests this was intended to reach payment processors and banks, not merely platform operators.
The "aid, abet, induce" language in Section 6 introduces secondary liability familiar from Indian criminal law but applied here to commercial promotion. A celebrity endorser, under this framework, does not merely receive separate treatment but is integrated into the advertising offence itself. No proceeding against a named endorser has been documented in the gathered material, leaving the provision's practical application untested.
Referral Links and the Ordinary User's Uncertainty
The reader's practical question—whether forwarding a referral link exposes them to prosecution—cannot be answered with certainty from the published material. Trilegal's analysis suggests referral links may be caught under "other promotional activity," but no primary source or court decision confirms this interpretation. The statutory language reaches anyone "otherwise involved in the making or causing to be made any advertisement," which a prosecutor could read to include viral sharing. Equally, the provision's drafting against commercial promotion suggests individual, non-compensated sharing might fall outside enforcement priorities.
This ambiguity is structural, not accidental. The Act's broad wording maximizes deterrent effect while leaving prosecutors discretion over where to deploy limited enforcement resources. An ordinary user sharing a link to friends faces theoretical exposure under Section 6's "induce" or "otherwise involved" language. Whether such a case would be filed, or would survive judicial scrutiny, remains unlitigated. The absence of reported proceedings against individual sharers provides no safe harbour, only an absence of precedent.
What Actually Disappeared
One consequence of the Act's passage is the reduction of betting brand presence in Indian cricket broadcasts and digital sports coverage. This description rests on observation and press reporting rather than verified documentation of specific contractual cancellations or app store removals. The statute's mechanism—prohibiting advertising separately from offering—means platforms could theoretically continue serving Indian users while promotional activity ceased. Whether this describes the actual market adjustment, or whether operators have exited entirely, is a question the published record leaves open.
The government framed the prohibition as comprehensive, covering advertising, promotion, and facilitation. This suggests enforcement intent across the statutory spectrum, not merely against the most visible broadcast advertisements.
The Gap Between Text and Testing
The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, leaves a space between its prohibitive language and its application to everyday conduct. The statute clearly bans referral codes, affiliate links, and gameplay showcases as promotional activity; Trilegal's analysis is explicit on this. Yet no court has ruled whether a private message containing a referral code constitutes "advertising," and no prosecutor has filed charges against an individual user for ordinary sharing. The two-year imprisonment and ₹50 lakh fine specified in Section 9 await their first test against the borderline case: the unpaid forward, the casual recommendation, the message to a group. Until that case comes, the law's reach exceeds its measured grasp, and ordinary users share links in statutory twilight.
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