On 12 November 2025, a Livemint explainer noted that the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 bans real money gaming in India but stops short of touching offshore betting apps such as 1xBet, 1xWin, Stake and Parimatch. For an Indian fantasy cricket app user, the boundary between the two shapes what is legal, what is advertised, what is paid out, and where the real consumer protections sit — so this is a guided read of the line, not a generic round-up.
· LeoVegas India Editorial Desk · Retrospective explainer
The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 is the central law that, in plain terms, treats real money gaming as a separate category from the rest of India's digital economy. Passing the law did not, however, take the rest of the world's apps off the open internet. The Livemint explainer published on 12 November 2025 framed the divide in a single sentence: the Act bans real money gaming in India, but the law does not cover offshore betting apps such as 1xBet, 1xWin, Stake and Parimatch. That single carve-out is the starting point for anyone trying to make sense of what changed for an Indian fantasy cricket app reader.
"Real money gaming" in the legal sense is narrower than the word "gaming" used in everyday conversation. The Act draws a line around platforms where a user pays to play and can win money back, where the outcome is driven by chance or by a chance-and-skill mix the regulator treats as chance, and where the operator is reachable from inside India. Where those three conditions are met, the central framework engages. Where they are not — for example, when the operator is hosted outside India and reachable mainly through websites, apps or messaging channels — the same Act has, on the face of the source dossier, a far more limited reach.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology continues to publish the relevant acts, rules and policy material for the central layer. State-level availability and individual operator terms can still differ, so the practical test for an adult user is what the official app shows in the eligibility screen, not what a search result or a chat message claims. The PROG Act gave central authorities a defined category, but the operator's own flow is still the layer that determines whether a particular feature is usable from a particular location on a particular day. For a fuller read of the in-app notice, the pre-deposit check and the KYC logic that follows the central frame, the LeoVegas India fantasy cricket app guide sits next to the central policy.
Offshore betting apps are not a single thing. They are a category of online gambling platforms that operate from tax havens such as Jamaica, Curaçao and Gibraltar, and they accept Indian users through websites, mobile apps and Telegram channels. The Livemint piece made the point that the 2025 Act, by its own text, does not bar these platforms. They continue to advertise in India through Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, often with cricket and Bollywood celebrities attached. They continue to take bets on sports, lotteries and real money casino games. They continue to operate from outside Indian jurisdiction, and that is the structural reason the central law's prohibition does not, by itself, remove them from the open internet.
For a fantasy cricket app user, the practical implication is that the boundary between "covered by Indian law" and "outside Indian law" is not the same as the boundary between "real money gaming" and "everything else". A skill-based fantasy sports app that operates under state rules and is recognised as a game of skill is treated differently from an offshore bookmaker, even though both involve paying money to play. The two markets live in different regulatory baskets, and protections, advertising rules and tax treatment follow that split. An adult user who crosses the line by accident or by social-media persuasion often does not realise they have crossed from one basket to the other until the first dispute.
The ASCI April-September 2025 half-yearly report, released to the public around the same time, made the volume of that cross-over advertising visible. More than 4,500 offshore betting app ads were reported to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre and the Directorate General of GST Intelligence. That is the advertising surface an Indian fantasy cricket app user is being asked to navigate, and it is now an advertising surface that includes the regulator's own complaint trail.
The Advertising Standards Council of India publishes its half-yearly complaint and review figures as a way of measuring how the advertising environment is shifting. The April-September 2025 report is unusually large. ASCI registered 6,841 complaints in the six-month window, and roughly two-thirds of those complaints were against offshore betting apps. The volume of ads reviewed also more than doubled compared with the previous year, up 102 per cent. The complaint count itself rose by 70 per cent. Together, those three numbers describe the same shift from two angles: more ads, and more complaints about those ads.
Where the ads appear is as important as their overall volume. Of the total ad complaints ASCI took note of during the period, 79 per cent were on Meta platforms — Instagram and Facebook. The report therefore tells a reader that an ordinary social media feed, not a niche betting forum, is the surface where most of these complaints are being filed. The remaining 21 per cent sits across Google, YouTube, OTT, messaging apps and smaller publishers, but the dominant channel is the same one an adult might already use to follow a cricket team or a movie release.
For a fantasy cricket app user, the report's structural lesson is that the line between entertainment advertising and offshore betting advertising is being blurred on the same screen. A celebrity-fronted reel, a livestream with a cricketer in the loop, or a Telegram channel offering "match tips" can be advertising inventory for an offshore bookmaker even when it looks like fan content. The report does not name individual operators in every case, but it does name the category, and the volume explains why the central authorities escalated the file to MIB, I4C and DGGI in the same window.
6,841 complaints registered. About two-thirds against offshore betting apps. The total ad review volume rose 102 per cent year on year. The complaint count rose 70 per cent. 79 per cent of complaints were on Meta platforms. More than 4,500 offshore betting ads were forwarded to MIB, I4C and DGGI. The numbers describe a market shifting fast, not a single bad campaign.
The Livemint piece also surfaced the celebrity layer. Cricketers Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh and Robin Uthappa have endorsed offshore betting apps in the past, as have actors Vijay Deverakonda, Sonu Sood and Rana Daggubati. Endorsement is not a regulatory green light: it is a marketing arrangement, and the ED/CID actions that followed over 2025 make that distinction sharper. The Enforcement Directorate attached assets of cricketers Suresh Raina and Shikhar Dhawan worth over Rs 11 crore, and actors Vijay Deverakonda and Prakash Raj were reportedly questioned by the Telangana CID. The audience takeaway is that the regulator's appetite for pursuing the promoter side of the offshore market is real.
This is the layer that Indian fantasy cricket app users should pay closest attention to before they follow a celebrity endorsement either way. A face attached to an ad is not a legal opinion. It is not a state eligibility certificate. It is not a substitute for the official terms in the app the user is actually about to deposit into. Once enforcement enters the picture, the same advertisement can become part of a case file, and the same celebrity can become a witness rather than a sponsor. The 2025 actions are a useful reminder that the rules of the road for advertising these products have caught up with the products themselves.
The asymmetry matters even for users who never click an ad. The Enforcement Directorate and state CID investigations are signals that the regulator is treating the offshore betting category as a regulated category, not an untracked one. For an Indian fantasy cricket app user, that improves the chances of clearing misleading ads from the platforms they actually use, but it does not by itself change the legal status of the offshore app they may have been redirected to.
Skill-based fantasy cricket apps live in a different regulatory basket. The user builds a team of real players from a real upcoming match, chooses a captain and a vice-captain, and is rewarded for points the selected players actually score on the field. The skill content is the team-selection layer, the captaincy layer, and the live-adjustment layer. State-level high-court rulings have historically treated paid fantasy sports as a game of skill, which is why state rules, not central ban, govern the eligibility of a particular app in a particular state.
Offshore betting apps, by contrast, let a user place a stake on a fixed event outcome — a ball, a six, a toss, a winner — that is decided by chance at the moment of the event. The decision is short, the result is immediate, and the operator's margin is the only guaranteed revenue. That is a different product, with a different operating margin, and crucially a different regulator. The Livemint source dossier does not collapse the two into one. Anyone who treats the line as blurry is likely to end up in a product they did not intend to use.
For an Indian fantasy cricket app user, the practical effect is that the PROG Act 2025 is not a broad-brush ban on every paid contest in cricket. A fantasy cricket app that meets state eligibility, age rules and the usual KYC checks is in a different operating category from an offshore betting app. The category difference is what makes the rest of the user journey — withdrawals, contest disputes, KYC, deposit limits — meaningfully different. The same Rs 100 deposit will not buy the same level of recourse in both cases.
| Decision point | Skill-based fantasy cricket app | Offshore betting app |
|---|---|---|
| How the user interacts | Build a team, choose captain, respond to live match | Place a stake on a fixed event outcome |
| Regulator | State-level rules, MeitY for central policy | Operates from a tax haven, Indian jurisdiction limited |
| Advertising rules | ASCI codes, state-level ad rules, KYC for deposit | Mostly Meta, YouTube, OTT; flagged in ASCI 2025 report |
| Withdrawal and dispute | Operator support, in-app wallet, RBI rails | Operator's own rules, no Indian recourse in most cases |
| Status under PROG Act 2025 | Not covered by the central ban | Not covered by the central ban; stated in the Livemint explainer |
| What a user should check first | State eligibility, age, KYC, deposit limits | Whether the app is reachable, who runs it, where the funds go |
The 2025 PROG Act is the macro context. The actual decision an adult makes is about a specific app, on a specific day, in a specific state. The following short list is the kind of pre-deposit read an Indian fantasy cricket app user can run in five minutes before paying into any paid contest. It is drawn from the boundary between the two regulatory baskets described above, and it assumes the user is already comfortable with the rule that fantasy sports are an adult, optional, spend-controlled activity.
The 2025 PROG Act is unlikely to be the last word on the subject. The MeitY policy page, the state-level public notices, and the ASCI half-yearly reports will continue to update. For an Indian fantasy cricket app user, the right reflex is to treat the central story as context and the in-app notice as the rule. The PROG Act fixed the boundary; the in-app flow defines what the user can actually do inside it.
The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 targets real money gaming and offshore betting apps. Skill-based fantasy sports apps that operate under state rules and are recognised as games of skill have historically been treated separately, but each operator must follow the state eligibility and age rules shown in the official app before any contest entry.
The law covers real money gaming offered in India. Offshore betting apps such as 1xBet, 1xWin, Stake and Parimatch sit in a separate category: Indians reach them through websites, apps or Telegram channels, and the 2025 ban does not by itself remove them from the open internet.
The Advertising Standards Council of India April-September 2025 half-yearly report logged 6,841 complaints, about two-thirds of which were against offshore betting apps. The number of ads reviewed more than doubled from the previous year, and 79 per cent of all ad complaints reviewed in the period were on Meta platforms.
Offshore betting apps and skill-based fantasy cricket apps are not the same product. The payout mechanics, regulator, advertising rules and consumer protections differ. A user who can tell the difference reads the official terms, checks state eligibility before depositing, and treats celebrity endorsements as marketing, not endorsement of legality.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology publishes central acts, rules and policy material. The Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports publishes industry information and consumer-protection context. State-level availability and individual operator terms can still differ from central policy.
The PROG Act 2025 sets the central frame. The notice inside the official app sets the rule for you. Use the official eligibility screen, KYC flow and withdrawal rules before any deposit.
