Centre Issues Fresh Advisory On Gambling Advertisements

The Centre on Friday warned media entities, online advertisement intermediaries and social media platforms to immediately refrain from showing advertisements or promotional content on betting and gambling in any form.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, in an advisory, cited the recent Central Government action against a network of agents who had collected substantial money from users of gambling apps that had subsequently funnelled the funds out of India to reiterate that advertisements of gambling and betting platforms pose a significant financial and socio-economic risk for the consumers, especially youth and children.

It has further added that this mechanism has linkages to money laundering networks, thereby threatening the financial security of the country.

The ministry had issued similar advisories at least on three earlier occasions - in June and October last year and in April this year.

The Ministry has stated in the advisory that along with these illegalities, it is also highly likely that black money is used to pay for such advertisements. To that end, the Ministry has noted that certain media entities, including advertisement intermediaries and social media platforms, have been allowing direct and indirect advertisements of betting and gambling platforms during major sporting events, including cricket tournaments. Further, the Ministry has observed that there is a tendency to spike promotion of such betting and gambling platforms during a major sporting event, especially cricket, and one such important international event is beginning in a few days from now, a press release from the ministry said.

"These advisories have stated that betting and gambling was an illegal activity and hence advertisements/promotion of such activities directly or indirectly on any of the media platforms falls foul of the various statutes, including under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the Press Council Act 1978, etc," according to an official statement.