Cricket Betting in India is Wildly Popular. It is estimated that over 1 Million Active Punters are involved in Cricket Betting Daily Online. But how are they doing it? Isn’t it Illegal or a Crime?
As per Indian Law
- Betting on Sports – Unclear, but organized betting is illegal
- You can bet among 2 friends. But any organized betting structure like a Betting Club or House is illegal.
- Match Fixing – ILLEGAL, NOT ALLOWED, BANNED
As you see that Match fixing is a bigger crime and illegal not only in India but worldwide.
Whats the deal with Cricket Betting in India?
Cricket Betting or any form of sports betting is the primary cause for encouraging bookmakers or punters or even players to get involved in Match Fixing.
The Betting Systems are now so advanced that you can bet on each and every ball and as a result fixing entire matches is not a history.
The live betting system gave birth to Spot Fixing.
What is Spot Fixing?
In Live betting, you can bet on things like
- If 4th Deliver will be a 4 or not.
- Will the Batting team score 6 or more runs in next over?
- Will there be a wicket in the next over?
These kinds of things have excellent odds. Often 3.5 to 5.5 or even more depending on the condition.
This resulted in Spot fixing. Where a person from the crowd hints the people about what the bowler/batsman is supposed to do next.
Because of such shameful incidents, Betting on Sports is Illegal in India!
Betting on Sports Online
This is a very Grey Area and in 100% cases, govt takes no action on these sites. Bet365 the most popular site for sports betting is Ranked 50th Most visited Site in India.
It makes it popular then so many other websites including the official cricket sites like icc-cricket.com which is ranked 2000+.
Online Sports betting is a Grey area mostly, as the Websites are located in countries like UK or Australia where betting on sports is legal.
Also, The payments are not done directly via Indian cards but through Skrill or Neteller or other payment merchants.
Online vs Offline
There are at least 10 Lakh Plus people from India(minimum) who do online betting on cricket.
The figure for people who do betting offline through bookies is unknown but it is estimated to be a business moving more than 20000 crore rupees in and out of India each year.