Sports apparel, sponsorships, celeb deals: How online betting is thriving

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₹8.4 lakh for the Yogeshwar Dutt Wrestling Academy and the Mary Kom Regional Boxing Academy. FairPlay India, another betting platform with over 115,000 followers on Instagram, features actor Jacqueline Fernandez as its brand ambassador. In a video from May, Fernandez states that FairPlay is "India’s most trusted platform" for various sports, including cricket and tennis.

Actor Sonu Sood represents 1xBet Sporting Lines, also a clothing business, while cricketers Suresh Raina, Harbhajan Singh and Shikhar Dhawan, as well as actor Ankush and table tennis player Meghana K., are associated with Parimatch Sports. Since many actors and cricketers enjoy immense popularity on social media, associating with them serves up a potential audience of hundreds of millions of people to the betting platforms, which have repeatedly come under government scrutiny. In May, Mint reported that the consumer affairs ministry had sought action against indirect ads ahead of the cricket and election season.

In April, some apps opened bets on the Lok Sabha election results. In December last year, the information technology ministry asked tech companies to block advertisements promoting illegal loan and betting apps. In October 2022, the information and broadcasting ministry asked television channels, digital news publishers and streaming platforms to refrain from showing advertisements, including surrogate ads, of online betting sites.

However, betting apps have maintained their media presence through all the scrutiny. According to Sandeep Goyal, chairman and managing director of advertising agency Rediffusion, regulators and the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) are silent on the matter, and take note only when someone complains. "This