The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, was handed with the target to “protect individuals, especially youth and vulnerable populations, from the adverse social, economic, psychological and privacy-related impacts” of on-line video games involving cash. As rising proof of their affect emerges, it’s changing into more and more clear that the Act is proving counterproductive. Early research recommend that the usage of offshore on-line betting and playing platforms has risen for the reason that ban. Following the implementation of the PROG Act in October 2025, customers rapidly shifted from regulated home web sites to unlawful offshore platforms.
Rise in offshore platform use
An much more worrying consequence is that these platforms not solely circumvent home legal guidelines however can also turn out to be channels for cash laundering and terror financing. Several reviews and surveys performed after the ban recommend that offshore platform utilization has risen sharply. A examine by CUTS International discovered a major enhance in offshore participation after the implementation of the PROG Act — from 68.3% to 82% in Delhi NCR, 67.8% to 83% in Tamil Nadu, and 66.7% to 91.7% in Maharashtra.
In Tamil Nadu, 67.8% of customers reported utilizing offshore platforms earlier than the ban, typically alongside home real-money gaming platforms. After the ban, this rose to 83%, involving the usage of offshore platforms, marking a rise of 15.2 share factors. This enhance displays a web behavioural shift of 15.2% towards offshore platforms, pushed by a bigger variety of respondents beginning offshore use after implementation of the PROG Act than these discontinuing it.
This will not be a brand new phenomenon. Across industries, paternalistic bans hardly ever change shopper behaviour; they merely push customers towards underground and extra unstable channels. Products which aren’t bodily in nature face a good deeper problem, as customers can rapidly shift by way of VPNs and personal hyperlinks, making efficient regulation and shopper safety far tougher.
A case for sturdy regulation
In the lately concluded Budget parliamentary session, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology reported to the Lok Sabha that the Centre had blocked 8,376 URLs to fight the monetary irregularities and cybercrime havoc being brought on by unlawful offshore betting networks. Despite this, media reviews proceed to allude to suicides linked to unlawful on-line betting traps even after the ban. It is due to this fact essential to recognise the size of the issue and rethink whether or not sturdy regulation could also be more practical than an outright ban.
Illegal operators use technologically superior evasion ways, together with digital non-public networks (VPN), proxy servers and encrypted platforms similar to WhatsApp and Telegram, to make sure seamless entry and transactions. By the time authorities block one area, customers are sometimes shifted to reflect websites with little disruption. The widespread use of VPNs additionally masks consumer areas, weakening geographic restrictions.
When customers shift to offshore platforms, home authorities face important limitations in making certain shopper safety and grievance redress. The straightforward accessibility of offshore on-line playing platforms to Indian customers is due to this fact a severe public concern.
A current inter-State on-line playing and fraud racket that got here to gentle in my constituency in Tamil Nadu — Sivaganga — in February this 12 months concerned a fraudulent “Old Coin Purchase Task” promoted on Telegram, by which the accused lured victims into investing cash in pretend old-coin bidding schemes by promising excessive returns. They additionally procured “mule accounts” by persuading villagers in Sivaganga, Paramakudi and Kalayarkovil to open financial institution accounts in trade for small funds, which had been then used to divert the proceeds of the crime.
Examples from abroad
Looking at different jurisdictions presents helpful views on responding to the rise of offshore platforms. The United Arab Emirates, regardless of its long-standing prohibition, moved in 2023 to determine a tightly managed federal licensing framework with strict compliance necessities, deposit limits and harm-prevention safeguards, partly to handle the dangers posed by unregulated offshore exercise. Sri Lanka is now transferring in an analogous course, with a centralised Gambling Regulatory Authority anticipated to turn out to be operational by June 2026 to consolidate oversight and produce offshore on-line exercise inside a transparent home framework.
The rising lesson is that the actual coverage alternative is never between allowing and banning. It is between making a regulated home framework with accountability and shopper safeguards, or permitting the area to be dominated by offshore operators past home oversight. Addressing this menace requires sustained coordination between the Centre and State governments. As the proof suggests, a blanket ban is unlikely to work in the long term. Instead, policymakers ought to rethink and take a look at a regulated framework inside a managed atmosphere.
This would allow policymakers to higher perceive and tackle the challenges posed by offshore operators, whereas additionally producing tax income from a regulated ecosystem. These revenues may then be reinvested in strengthening offshore monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, in addition to funding player-awareness campaigns — an strategy adopted efficiently in a number of western international locations.
Karti P. Chidambaram is Member of Parliament, Congress celebration, (Sivaganga), Tamil Nadu