What if Betting is made legal?
As team owners place their bets on IPL players this new season, we dive into loopholes and legalities of betting on sports. ReadOn
Some carry a handkerchief tucked halfway into their pockets. Some rub their feet a little too much before running. Some just do a little ziggy-wiggy on the pitch to let someone far away, sitting in a dark room, know how much money to bet on their every move.
It’s a quick buck, it’s an adrenaline rush, it’s all fun and games until it lands you in jail.
Betting is illegal but did you know of the loopholes in our system that make it not illegal? (Hello police, we’re not giving any ideas. This is just the passing of information, okay?)
Okay. Let’s bat your memory awake with a few major scandals that got everyone munching on popcorn. We have the 2000 scandal of the South African captain, Wessell Johannes Cronje, booked for match-fixing. A 2010 scandal of 3 Pakistani players, persecuted for spot-fixing. All that’s fine, but what does it have to do with us, Indians?
They were all aimed at the pockets of rich Indian businessmen, who believe that when you cannot scoop ghee with your right finger, you must use your left.
It is not surprising that betting is illegal in India and yet, we’re the ground for the best deals in the world. Especially for cricket. It’s a fairly easy market to enter. Few meetings here and there. A tampered mobile phone. Funny little code words and lo behold, you’re winning!
It’s a fact and the data proves it. 40% of all internet users enjoy gambling. 80% of all illegal sport-betting is on cricket. And if that is the case, we give you 4 runs to guess that IPL is the celebrated, widely popular annual game to pitch your bet. Why, there have been too many cases. One that went international with a bookie involved both in the Indian and Bangladesh Premier League.
Data also tells us that illegal gambling is growing at the rate of 7% every year and is now worth more than a hundred billion dollars. A $100 billion! What’s pushing this industry so much? Is it free internet data (or a lot of free time)? Or, is it the basic human need for kuch toofani karte hai? Whatever be it, mobile gambling has taken root and is growing in the shape of very legal fantasy cricket.
Law finds the game of chance illegal but the game of skill is not. Dream11 was such a rage in 2020, and hindsight tells us that it is going to be the future of gam(bl)ing in India.
To not leave any misconceptions here, let’s clear this.
Betting on sports is illegal. But, there is no law that states that online betting is illegal.
Bookmakers (the ones who manage a bet shop – estimating odds and distributing the payoffs) based in India are illegal. But, there is no law that states that bookmakers based outside of India are illegal.
With a simple 1+1=2, you can see that a customer in India can place an online bet with a bookmaker outside of India and won’t go to jail. It is a loophole that offshore betting companies are betting on. And winning.
Bet365, an online betting site based in the UK, has openly proclaimed that it is accepting bets from customers in any Indian state.
But, in the times of fantasy sports – which is actually legal, why are people still gambling in the illegal market? Because, money.
Fantasy-sport bets don’t offer much. Moreover, traditional sports betting is legal in many parts of the world, like in the UK and Australia and 60% of bets placed globally are in black markets. So, even if India does try to regulate this industry, it is hard to say that the legal way of betting will ever substitute the illegal one.
There is one way to regulate it though (if the government wants). They can legalize it and earn revenue via tax. Win-win-win? Cricket viewership may increase (even non-cricket lovers love betting) and broadcasters may hire more people. So, more money for them and more employment for us. Spurt in income and GDP. Ta-da, clean bowled.
Plus, when legalized, offshore bookmakers’ money laundering and outflow of funds from our economy will be put on hold. Legalizing betting will help locate black money (far more than killing a 500 rupee note would have), and prevent the financing of terror agencies.
This is not just our view, even the Ministry of State for Finance, Anurag Thakur, said that bringing the gambling industry into the formal economy would contain “unholy and corrupt” practices such as match-fixing and spot-fixing. Anyways, when has criminalizing something prevented people from not doing it? Would it not be better to just regulate the market? You get transparency of the who-when-what, and any barrier of entry will be put in black-and-white.
But despite all the positives, legalizing gambling does not come without its flaws. Of course, if betting is legalized, we can imagine the entire game being rigged, start to end. No one will trust an honest game of cricket and the entire idea of enjoying sports will be reduced to earning from it. Players will hardly stay behind. Plus, how morally and ethically correct is it, in our culture, to gamble? Did we learn nothing from Mahabharata and that evil game of di(c)e?
All in all, a legal framework by the government can help regulate the market, or the market will die before it is even born. When the USA legalized betting, the NBA (National Basketball Association) and MLB(Major League Baseball) demanded a 1% integrity fee on bets placed on their games (the casino lobby denied, these games would go on irrespective of any betting). Which is fair if they’re planning to play fair. But, we know how humans operate (and how humans sitting on chairs operate), so bringing in law here in India, is the only safe way to play safe. If not, we’ll continue to do what we do best.
Play cricket.
Until next time...
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Written with love by Aastha and researched by Yash