Centre Warns Media Outlets To Refrain From Showcasing Online Betting Ads

New Delhi: On Monday, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) issued two advisories, one for private television channels and the other for digital news publishers and over-the-top (OTT) platforms, requesting that they refrain from airing advertisements for online gambling sites and their substitutes. The Ministry claims to have already advised newspapers, private TV networks, and digital news publishers to avoid posting advertisements for online betting platforms on June 13, 2022.

According to the ministry, the government was made aware that various sports channels on television and on OTT platforms have recently started airing commercials for offshore online betting sites as well as their dummy news websites. Evidence that included direct and proximate marketing for offshore betting platforms like Fairplay, PariMatch, Betway, Wolf 777, and 1xBet was added to the warnings. The government has stated in the advice that online offshore betting platforms are currently exploiting news websites as a stand-in for the betting platforms’ own digital media advertisements. In these situations, the ministry has discovered that the surrogate news websites’ logos remarkably resemble gambling websites.

Furthermore, according to the ministry, neither the news websites nor the betting platforms are authorised to operate in India. According to the ministry, these websites use the guise of news to promote betting and gambling through substitute advertising.

The Ministry saw that certain news and OTT platforms continued to feature betting platform adverts and promotional content.

In the interest of the general public, the June 13 guideline to the various platforms had advised against advertising advertisements for online betting. Additionally, it had requested that these advertisements not be directed at the Indian market by internet advertising intermediaries.