Fantasy sports after the 2025 gaming law: how apps earn in India

In a fantasy game, a user builds a virtual team of real players and scores points from how those players perform in a match. Before 2025, the main business was paid contests: users paid an entry fee, and the app kept a platform fee, commonly a share of the pool, while the rest went to winners. India had some of the world's largest fantasy platforms by users.

Apps also earned from advertising and sponsorship, and the largest ones spent heavily on cricket sponsorship, including team jerseys and tournament rights. That spending was funded by money from paid contests, which is why the new law hit their income directly.

The model had a distinctive feature: a user had to be active during live matches, which made fantasy apps among the stickiest of mobile products. That audience, and the data on what it likes, is the main asset that operators still hold after the ban.

Parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 in August 2025. It prohibits online money games, defined as games played with a deposit or stake in expectation of winnings, whether the game is one of skill or chance. This covers paid fantasy contests, poker and rummy for money. It also bars advertising and financial services linked to such games.

The Act allows e-sports, which must meet recognition requirements, and online social games, where a one-time or subscription fee for access is permitted if no wager is involved. Government rules under the Act, reported as notified in 2026 and in force from 1 May 2026, set up the authority and procedures. As of November 2026 summaries differ on some dates and names, so check the official text.

The Act also sets out penalties for offering or advertising online money games, including imprisonment and fines for operators and for people who promote them, according to law-firm summaries. Banks and payment firms are barred from handling money for such games. For a startup in the sector, this means the compliance question is about the whole product, not only the contest.

Paid fantasy contests are covered by the ban on online money games as reported in law-firm summaries, so they are not lawful to offer. Free-to-play fantasy games, where no deposit is taken and no cash prize is paid, are not covered in the same way.

Before the law, several courts had treated fantasy sports as games of skill, which are outside the gambling laws in many states. The new law does not turn on that test, since it bans money games whether skill or chance. Court challenges were pending in the Supreme Court as of the latest reports, so the position can change. Anyone affected should read the current orders.

With paid contests gone, operators have turned to other income. The routes below are the ones the sector has discussed. Whether any of them replaces the lost income is uncertain.

The hardest of these is advertising. A free game can reach a large audience, but ad income per user is low compared with the fees that paid contests brought in, so the same audience earns far less. Brands also need to be comfortable with how the Act treats advertising for money games, which is why operators now keep their free products clearly separate from anything that resembles a wager.

• Advertising on free games and sports content, sold to brands that want an engaged cricket audience
• Sports media and ticketing, such as streaming rights, news and live scores
• Subscriptions and premium features in free games, as long as no wager is involved
• Other game genres, such as casual and mobile games that do not involve money prizes
• Fan engagement and e-commerce, including merchandise and sponsor tie-ins
• Sports infrastructure and leagues owned by the same parent company

Reports said the biggest operators stopped paid contests after the law passed and reworked their businesses. Dream Sports, the parent of Dream11, is a well-known example: its group also has a sports media and ticketing business and other ventures, and it has said it will focus on these. Details of what each company has done are in company statements and news reports, not in this guide.

Many companies cut staff, and sponsors and cricket bodies had to replace money that had come from fantasy operators. Because facts here move quickly, check the latest announcements. As of November 2026, a legal challenge to the Act was before the Supreme Court.

For sports bodies and broadcasters the ban meant replacing a big source of sponsorship. Several teams and leagues changed their sponsors, and the effects on cricket marketing have been discussed in the press. These are second-order effects, and a reader should rely on reported figures, not on guesses, when judging how large they were.

Before the ban, online gaming faced a 28% GST rate on the value of deposits or bets from October 2023, a change that sharply raised costs for operators. Disputes over earlier tax demands against gaming companies continued in the courts after the ban. Reports differ about the status of these cases, so a reader should check recent orders.

For a startup, the point is that gaming income has been taxed more heavily and regulated more closely than most software revenue. Free-to-play games funded by ads fall under the usual GST rules for advertising and digital services. See the linked guide on GST for startups for the basics.

When a gaming company says it is pivoting, ask three questions. First, what share of its revenue came from paid contests before the law, and how much of that has been replaced? Second, does the new product earn money without a wager, such as through ads, subscription or content? Third, how many users stayed after paid contests ended?

Investors also look at cash runway, since income can fall faster than costs. The linked guides on freemium and subscription models explain how free products turn into revenue. For B2B versus B2C differences, see the last linked guide. This is general information, not legal advice. Check the Act and current court orders with a lawyer.

There are also questions that remain open: how the rules treat borderline cases such as free games with paid cosmetic items, how courts treat past tax and licence disputes, and how other states respond. Court orders can change any of these answers, which is why the date of a source matters as much as its content when reading about this sector.