What drives the lucrative, murky world of online cricket betting in India?
Since gambling on live sports is illegal in India, betting apps operate from tax havens which have little corporate regulation.
On October 14, Kumud Rishabh, a third-year student of mass communication in Delhi, won Rs 74,000 on an online betting app after he correctly predicted that India would win a cricket World Cup match against Pakistan.
Rishabh already had winnings of Rs 1 lakh from his earlier bets. So, on October 15, the 23-year-old decided to go all in by betting Rs 1.74 lakh on England defeating Afghanistan – a rather safe call to make. But, defending champions England ended up losing to Afghanistan.
Rishabh lost all the betting money he had made so far during the World Cup. But that did not stop him from betting on the remaining matches.
“There is always a next match,” Rishabh said. “If I can lose all my money, I can win it back too.”
Despite the financial risks involved in gambling, Indians seem to have taken to online betting apps with gusto. By marrying the huge appetite for cricket with the temptation to make easy money, online betting appears to have found a booming market in the country.
A report published in October by the Think Change Forum, an economics think-tank says that the estimated size of the online betting industry in India is Rs 8,20,000 crore of which 80%-90%...
