Gambling traffic in India: state-by-state tactics in a changing legal landscape

India has long been described as the sleeping giant of iGaming. With more than 1.4 billion people, a young, mobile-first population, and passionate sports culture, the market has been a magnet for operators and affiliates searching for “online casino India 2025” and “sports betting India legal” opportunities. Market research in early 2025 projected Indian online gambling revenues in the billions of US dollars, driven mainly by sports betting and mobile casino activity.

However, everything changed in August 2025. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 (PROGA) introduced a nationwide ban on online money games. The Act prohibits offering, facilitating and advertising any online game that involves monetary stakes or convertible tokens, regardless of whether the underlying game is based on skill, chance, or a mix of both.

This article explains how affiliates should now think about gambling traffic in India, why state-by-state tactics still matter for long-term planning, and how networks such as TrafficStars fit into a compliant strategy.

India’s iGaming potential – and the 2026 reset

Before PROGA, India’s online gambling and real-money gaming market was on a strong growth trajectory. Industry reports estimated the online gambling segment at roughly USD 2.9–5.0 billion in 2024, with forecasts to almost double by 2030.

Sports betting, especially cricket, IPL and international football, represented the largest and fastest-growing vertical.

Digital fundamentals remain extremely strong:

1. rapid smartphone and 4G/5G adoption
2. UPI (Unified Payments Interface) as the default digital payment rail
3. high engagement with sports content and gaming among younger audiences

However, the introduction of PROGA on 1 October 2025 created a new baseline: offering or promoting real-money online games to users in India is now a criminal offence, with explicit penalties for advertising and financial transactions.

For affiliates and media buyers, this means that search intents such as “best online casino India for beginners”, “online casino bonuses India no deposit”, or “mobile casino India app download” still exist, but cannot be monetised with real-money offers targeting users located in India without significant legal risk.

The new legal baseline: PROGA and real-money gaming

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2026 does three crucial things for gambling traffic:

• It bans online money games nationwide. An online money game is any online game where users pay money or other stakes in expectation of monetary or convertible rewards.
• It prohibits advertising and sponsorship related to such games, including indirect promotion through influencers and affiliates.
• It blocks financial rails, forbidding banks and payment providers from processing transactions related to online money games.

Major operators have already shut down real-money products in India in response. Large fantasy and RMG brands have closed their money-gaming divisions, and global betting groups such as Flutter have ceased money-based operations in the country.

This is a national law, sitting above earlier state-level rules. It does not matter whether the game is rummy, poker, fantasy sports or slots. If there is real money or convertible tokens involved, and the player is in India, the game and any associated advertising are banned unless the Act is amended or struck down in ongoing constitutional challenges.

Why state-by-state tactics still matter

Even under a national ban, understanding India state by state remains useful for:

• long-term scenario planning if parts of PROGA are relaxed or modified
• land-based casino and tourism strategy
• non-monetary gaming, e-sports and free-to-play funnels that may remain permissible

Historically, India was a patchwork of laws under the old Public Gambling Act of 1867, with each state deciding how strictly to apply or update it. A simplified view is:

1. Casino and tourism hubs • Goa, Daman & Diu, Sikkim: Regulated land-based casinos under state legislation. Sikkim also introduced a framework for online gaming and sports gaming licences, although scope and availability were narrowed over time.

2. Skill-game friendly regimes (pre-PROGA)

• Nagaland: The Nagaland Prohibition of Gambling and Promotion and Regulation of Online Games of Skill Act recognises and licenses certain online games of skill played for stakes.

• Meghalaya: Briefly had a licensing law for both skill and chance games (Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Act, 2021) before repealing it in 2023. These states built early licensing mechanisms for RMG. Although PROGA currently bans online money games regardless of skill, their experience could influence future reforms or carve-outs if the Supreme Court requires a more nuanced approach to skill versus chance.

3. Prohibitionist states

Several states went further than the baseline Public Gambling Act and explicitly banned online real-money games, especially after concerns over addiction and suicides:

• Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
• Assam and Odisha
• Tamil Nadu (with an online RMG law recently upheld with strict Aadhaar-based verification and advertising controls)

Other states such as Gujarat, Maharashtra and Kerala also adopted very restrictive positions on online betting and RMG. PROGA now aligns the national position with these stricter states for online money games.

4. States with no dedicated RMG law

In many other states, there were no specific online gambling statutes, and operators relied on judicial rulings that exempted games of skill. That fragmented landscape is one of the reasons the central government argued for a single nationwide framework. For affiliates, this means that state-by-state segmentation is now mainly about risk, offline focus and future planning, rather than about where one can safely run real-money online casino funnels today.

Indian audience gambling behaviour in 2026

Although real-money games have been banned, understanding Indian audience gambling behaviour 2026 remains important for long-term strategy and for other legal gaming products. Key patterns include:

• Mobile first: Indian users overwhelmingly access gaming and betting content on smartphones.
• Sports driven: Cricket dominates, but football, kabaddi and e-sports have strong followings. Sports betting has been the main growth engine in the Indian iGaming space.
• High UPI adoption: UPI is the default method for digital payments and has been heavily used for deposits on both legal and illegal betting sites.
• Value sensitivity: Indian players show strong responsiveness to welcome packages, cashback and low-minimum deposits, which made “online casino bonuses India no deposit” and small-ticket offers extremely attractive before the ban. These behaviours will remain relevant for any future regulated framework, and they continue to matter for free-to-play, e-sports and fantasy content that do not fall within the definition of an online money game.

Payment flows: UPI, banks and crypto after PROGA

Before October 2025, the most common answer to “how to deposit online casino India UPI” involved a simple sequence: pick a site that accepts rupees, choose UPI, approve the payment via Google Pay, PhonePe or similar, and start betting within seconds.

PROGA has fundamentally altered that picture:

1. Banks and payment providers are now forbidden from processing transactions related to online money games, with heavy penalties for non-compliance.
2. UPI has been identified in policy and research as a primary channel for illegal gambling flows, leading to special supervisory attention.

From a compliance perspective, this means that any attempt to present “how to deposit online casino India UPI” as a step-by-step marketing funnel today would be directly at odds with the law.

The same caution applies to “crypto casino India pay with bitcoin”. Cryptocurrencies are not recognised as legal tender in India, but they are legal to hold and trade as Virtual Digital Assets under a separate tax regime. PROGA, however, defines stakes to include credits, coins and tokens that are convertible into money.

As a result, using crypto as a deposit route for online money games targeting Indian users may still fall within the prohibition, even if the funds move off traditional banking rails. In addition, it raises anti-money-laundering and enforcement risks.

What “casino affiliate marketing India” means after PROGA

For several years, affiliates built successful funnels around:

• “online casino India 2026” review sites
• low-stake “best online casino India for beginners” guides
• comparisons of live dealer casino India rupees platforms
• rankings of UPI-friendly sportsbooks under “sports betting India legal”

These models relied on a combination of offshore-licensed operators, rupee support, UPI and strong SEO.

After PROGA, the rules for casino affiliate marketing India traffic sources change dramatically:

1. Promoting online money games to users in India is now treated as advertising a prohibited service. This carries potential prison terms and significant fines.
2. Facilitating deposits or withdrawals, including through routing traffic to payment pages, may expose both operators and intermediaries to penalties
3. Enforcement has already led to job losses, app shutdowns and the closure of RMG divisions at major brands.

In practical terms, affiliates should:

• Stop targeting Indian users with real-money casino, sports betting or RMG offers, even if the underlying operator is licensed offshore.
• If a website has global traffic, geofence or dynamically alter content so that Indian visitors see only compliant information, such as educational articles about regulation, responsible gaming resources, or links to legal e-sports and free-to-play products that do not involve stakes.
• Monitor ongoing constitutional challenges to PROGA at the Supreme Court, which may eventually clarify whether certain high-skill formats can return under strict regulation.

This article is informational only and does not constitute legal advice. For any campaign touching India, local legal counsel is essential.

Where TrafficStars fits into an India-aware strategy

TrafficStars is a performance-driven ad network that specialises in high-volume verticals such as iGaming and adult entertainment. It offers formats such as popunders, native ads, in-page push, interstitials, banners and video pre-roll, with granular targeting by GEO, OS, device, connection type and user activity. This makes it very effective for “casino traffic sources” in markets where real-money gambling campaigns are lawful.

In an India context, the key point is compliance-first use:

• For real-money iGaming campaigns, advertisers can use TrafficStars targeting tools to exclude India entirely, ensuring that “how to drive adult gambling traffic” campaigns reach only jurisdictions where online gambling and its advertising are legal.
• If and when India introduces a narrower, regulated regime for certain formats, TrafficStars geo-targeting and optimisation features would allow sophisticated state-by-state tactics: heavier focus on states with casino tourism infrastructure, different messaging for stricter or more conservative regions, and refined device and language targeting (for example, Hindi-first versus regional language creatives).
• Even today, brands operating in legal verticals such as e-sports tournaments, casual social casinos without stakes, or gaming-related content may use TrafficStars to reach Indian users, provided that the campaigns clearly stay outside the definition of online money games under PROGA. Here, standard formats such as native and in-page push are well suited to content-driven funnels, rather than deposit-driven funnels.

In other words, TrafficStars remains a powerful tool for global gambling advertisers, but India now requires a careful compliance carve-out rather than aggressive acquisition targeting.

Looking ahead: preparing for the next chapter

India remains one of the most important digital and gaming markets in the world. Demographics, smartphone penetration, UPI, and sports culture have not changed. What has changed is the legal environment for real-money online gambling and for any advertising related to it.

For now, responsible affiliates and operators should:

• treat India as a no-go GEO for real-money casino and sports-betting campaigns aimed at residents
• continue to monitor legal developments around PROGA and Supreme Court challenges
• invest in other high-potential Asian markets where regulation is evolving towards licensing rather than prohibition, using networks such as TrafficStars for scalable acquisition
• keep high-quality, India-facing content focused on information, regulation, e-sports and free-to-play entertainment, rather than on deposits and bonuses

If the legal climate softens in future, the deep understanding of Indian audience behaviour, payment culture and state-by-state nuances described here will put you in a strong position to build sustainable, fully compliant funnels for “online casino India 20XX” when and if the law finally allows it.