INDIAN MANDALA Delhi and the problem of regulating internet gambling

Google has announced a pilot project to make some virtual gaming apps available in India, where internet gambling is formally banned. But the sector is growing rapidly, promising $5 billion and 50,000 jobs by 2025. Yet the debt trap and user suicide are also on the rise.

Milan () – Earlier this month Google announced that it will launch a one-year pilot project to make real money gaming apps available in India. In reality, it would only be some types of applications, such as card games and “fantasy sports”, in which players participate in real or imaginary sports matches.

It may seem trivial but it is an important decision, because in India there is no law that regulates gambling on the Internet. The central government is in charge of regulating the use of the Internet while the issue of online games of chance – from which the so-called “skill games” are excluded, those that require a certain reasoning before placing the bet , to differentiate them from other games that rely on chance – like rolling the dice, for example – is left up to the individual states, and most of them ban them. In some states, such as Kerala and Karnataka, online gambling is now legal because local courts recently overturned bans imposed by Delhi. Until now, Google had excluded those applications in its Play Store in India for precisely that reason, and for Indian users the only way to play or bet is from a browser.

As it explains rest of world, The change is due to two reasons: on the one hand, the big online gaming companies such as the Indian Fantasy Sports Federation and IndiaTech.org argue that their products should be considered “skill games”. On the other hand, Google may have sniffed out the possibility of big profits: India’s online gambling market, worth roughly $1 billion today, is expected to hit $2 billion by the end of the year. next year and $5 billion by 2025, with the possibility of creating around 50 thousand new jobs. Card game and fantasy sport revenue increased 26% in just one year during the pandemic. Among the most popular games is Dream11, a fantasy cricket app (which is legal, because it is classified as a skill game) on which many foreign investors have also bet. What made the industry grow was the change in perception after the first lockdowns. They had always been considered a waste of time and a way to isolate themselves, while virtual games now represent for many users a different possibility to connect with the world around them.

However, growth is not without side effects. At the beginning of the year, the news of the death of an 11-year-old boy addicted to online games who had spent 6 thousand rupees (76 euros) without parental permission caused a stir. And the indebtedness of the users is increasing. Among the young and even very young, requests for loans have increased over the internet to access the premium versions of the games. In other words, even though gambling remains illegal, requests for Chinese apps that hold user data until the debt is paid in full have increased, cybersecurity expert Ananth Prabhu explained. Times of India. According to some investigations, it is not the strict addiction to gambling that has caused the suicides reported by the Indian press in the last year -20 in the southern state of Tamil Nadu alone-, but bankruptcy and the debt trap.

In May the government created an interministerial working group with the aim of regulating the sector. It is a sensitive issue, not only because of the bureaucratic difficulty in bringing the central government to an agreement with individual states (the same platform could be used legally in one state and prohibited in another), but also because a total ban risks pushing people to look for clandestine and dangerous alternatives to continue gambling, experts explain. Even some psychiatrists recommend not criminalizing the use of skill games, which, unlike gambling, offer players positive emotions and can increase cognitive abilities. But according to the E-Gaming Federation of India, 80% of the most used online games are gambling. Full-fledged games of chance.

The Indian Fantasy Sports Federation welcomed the government’s initiative to form a specialist team: “This step indicates that the government intends to boost the growth of the Indian internet gaming industry. The task force is a big step forward.” in creating regulatory stability for this fast-growing sector.

But there is no lack of discontent. In the last few days the platform WinZO sued Google for not including its apps in the pilot project, which the platform considers “an unfair business practice.” WinZO, which posted an annual turnover of $13 million in 2021, claims to have 85 million users in India who spend an average hour a day on the platform. But in the end, Google’s is only a first initiative: it is up to the current Indian government to make a decision that simultaneously protects the profits of the industry and protects users against indebtedness.

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