Ahead of sporting season, MIB advises media entities to refrain from showing betting ads

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has advised all stakeholders, including media entities, online advertisement intermediaries and social media platforms, to immediately refrain from showing promotional ad content that directly or indirectly links with betting or gambling.

It has also highlighted that failure to adhere to this advisory may invite appropriate action from the government of India under various statutes.

The Ministry has 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/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 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, MIB has noted that certain media entities, including ad 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, it has been observed that there is a tendency to spike the promotion of such betting and gambling platforms during a major sporting event, especially cricket, and one such important international event is beginning a few days from now.

As a preventive measure, the Ministry has issued advisories to warn media platforms against publicising betting/gambling platforms along with online ad intermediaries to not target such ads towards the Indian audience.

Advisories issued by the Ministry on June 13 and October 3, last year, in addition to April 4, this year, stated that betting and gambling are illegal activities and hence advertisements and 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. 

Furthermore, the recently amended rule 3 (1) (b) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, also provides that intermediaries shall make reasonable efforts by themselves, and to cause the users of their computer resource to not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that “is in the nature of an online game that is not verified as a permissible online game; (x) is in the nature of advertisement or surrogate advertisement or promotion of an online game that is not a permissible online game, or of any online gaming intermediary offering such an online game.”

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