India has passed a bill banning online games involving money, citing addictive and manipulative features. Atul Thakkar of of Anand Rathi Advisors says the move could hit fantasy sports platforms like Dream11 - major cricket advertisers - and fintech firms that support payment services for such games.

Delhi

India has enacted a ban on online money games, aiming to address social issues such as addiction and financial distress among families, as well as concerns over money laundering and terror financing. The new law distinguishes between money games and esports, with the latter set to be promoted and regulated separately.

The crackdown is expected to have far-reaching effects on the sector, impacting both listed and unlisted companies, private equity and venture capital investments, and associated industries like fintech and advertising. Major sponsorships in Indian cricket, previously backed by online gaming firms, are also likely to be affected.

From cricket ads to startups: Impact of India’s online gaming crackdown

So first of all, the government has framed this move as a crackdown on betting and gaming. But what would you say is the ultimate problem that this potential law is now trying to solve? See, if you look at India as a geography, apart from the state of Goa, where you have casinos on water body, no other state allows casinos also. So online gaming, which was mushrooming over the years, was somewhere or the other going to face this. Last year, there was also significant GST implemented on money games. Now, what the government has observed over the years is that there have been significant ramp-up in the middle class going and playing these online games, especially children and adolescents, and fortune of entire family are wiped out because of that. There have been situations of suicides also in online money games, because they have become addictive. So that's one of the social problems. On the other side, the issue that the government started seeing is that these portals were used. These portals are largely operated from outside of India. There was limited control and were used for money laundering and financing terror activities. And hence, given the dual issue, the government decided to ban all sorts of money games, whether it is by skill or by chance. Having said that, the bill clearly distinguishes between esports, which does not use money, and will promote esports. In fact, a detailed law will be established for the same. So money game is now out, esports is in. This will definitely impact a significant number of corporates who are there in the money game business, as well as their employees. Indeed, Atul, and we've already seen an impact on the market, but walk me through what you think the long term consequences are going to be for the listed players in this space. We've already seen significant share price declines. Do you think this new bill is going to ultimately spell the end of this sector? So see, any policy paralysis, which is clearly banning and not regulating it, is going to impact the sector overall. On the listed side, we had only one player, which is Nazara. And that too was not generating significant revenue from money game. They were an investor in one of the money game platforms to the extent of $122 million. And they have decided mostly to either write it down their investment or to provision for this, based on whatever their auditors will advise. But on the unlisted side, there were many players. In fact, investment by the PEBC funds in this segment was north of $2 billion. And there was a significant advertisement spent, sponsorships, which all these platforms used to do. Especially in the IPL and the international play for the Indian cricket team was sponsored by Team 11 and My11 Circle. So all these will get impacted. Indeed. And we're not just seeing the impact on businesses operating in this space, in particular, the one listed business that you mentioned, but also within the private equity space and the venture capital space as well. What do you think this is going to mean for deal flow and broader investor activity in this space on the institutional side as well? Are we going to see funds drying up? Completely drying up. In fact, I'll tell you, it is not going to only impact the direct impact will be seen by these platforms who are operating money games, but there will be a significant indirect impact seen by fintech players who are supporting and providing wallet services or any other financial support to all these platforms. So there will be a second or indirect level of impact also on some of these investments, which is right now not accounted for. So only time will tell us how much is the impact on all those players.

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