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The Union Cabinet on Tuesday (August 19, 2025) approved a Bill to effectively prohibit real money games (RMGs) online, a multi-billion dollar industry that counts fantasy sports platforms such as Dream11 and card game apps, including PokerBaazi. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025 is now headed to Parliament and is likely to be tabled on Wednesday.
The move was not telegraphed in any public way by the government before the Cabinet approved it, with no draft Bill circulated by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, as has been done for a number of notifications and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
A copy of the Bill viewed by The Hindu lays out a broad definition for “online money gaming,” targeting a vast swath of RMGs in one fell swoop. Under this definition, “depositing money or other stakes in expectation of winning which entails monetary and other enrichment in return of money or other stakes” comes under online money gaming, and is prohibited.
Industry associations representing RMG firms did not have a comment to offer on the proposal and indicated that they would respond formally when the Bill is released upon its tabling in Parliament. The firms maintain extensive contacts with government officials and have resisted the government’s previous attempts to regulate them. For instance, in the months leading up to the GST Council’s decision to increase the tax applicable on RMG deposits, the industry registered its opposition on multiple fronts.
At the State level, industry bodies and individual firms have successfully obtained stays on bans on their operation, such as in Karnataka. Those legal victories rested on a critical distinction between games of skill and games of chance, with only the latter being recognised by courts as gambling, which is a State subject in the Constitution.
Now, that distinction may present an existential threat instead of a lifeline to the industry, as online gaming has been brought under the administrative authority of the IT Ministry, which will enforce this prohibition. Under a 2023 amendment to the IT Rules, 2021, the government sought to bring the industry under self-regulation, with oversight by an independent committee to address complaints. However, no self-regulatory bodies (SRBs) were approved by the government under that amendment, with officials questioning proposed SRBs’ independence from the firms they were supposed to be overseeing.
The Bill creates a carve-out for the e-sports industry, essentially allowing video game tournaments that collect entry fees to continue doing so without falling afoul of the RMG prohibition.
Published – August 20, 2025 01:03 am IST
