Online Gambling in South Asia: A Region Split Between the Ban and the Bet

South Asia — India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, home to nearly two billion people — has become one of the world's most contested online gambling battlegrounds. Cheap data, near-universal smartphone access and a deep cultural attachment to cricket betting have fuelled an explosion of online wagering, much of it among young men. In response, governments across the region spent 2025 and 2026 redrawing the rules. The striking thing is that they did not all move in the same direction. Most have doubled down on prohibition and digital enforcement. One has broken ranks to regulate and tax instead.

India: A Blanket Ban

India delivered the region's most dramatic shift. In August 2025, Parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act (PROGA), which banned all online "money games" — regardless of whether they involve skill or chance — and came into force on 1 October 2025. The government justified the move by pointing to addiction, financial distress, money laundering and even links to terrorism financing, noting estimates that a large share of the population was losing billions of dollars a year on wagers.

The law bans advertising, bars banks from processing related transactions, and reaches offshore operators hosting infrastructure abroad. A 2026 rulebook established a central regulator and carved out space for e-sports and social games. But the ban has drawn fierce pushback: industry bodies warn of job losses and a migration of users to unregulated platforms, while state-level moves (such as Karnataka's attempt to legalise online horse-race betting) and constitutional challenges suggest the fight is far from settled.

Bangladesh: Criminalising the Platforms

Bangladesh took a parallel route through its Cyber Security Ordinance 2025, which makes creating, operating or promoting an online gambling platform a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison or a fine of one crore taka. The Criminal Investigation Department launched a nationwide crackdown from May 2025, and by late October authorities reported shutting down thousands of mobile financial-service accounts and well over a thousand gambling platforms.

Enforcement has been uneven, though. Reports persisted of Google's ad network still serving betting ads to Bangladeshi users, the central bank flagged cross-border money laundering through betting platforms as a systemic financial risk, and the High Court ordered an investigation into celebrity endorsements — a sign of how normalised the marketing had become.

Pakistan: An Old Law, New Enforcement

Pakistan's framework is the Prevention of Gambling Act 1977, written two decades before the internet and never substantially updated. For years, enforcement against individual players was patchy. That changed in 2025: the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency declared dozens of apps illegal, and the telecom regulator blocked 184 gambling-related sites and apps, including several major international betting brands. High-profile arrests of influencers who promoted betting apps signalled a new focus on the marketing layer. Yet players continue to route around the blocks using VPNs, mobile-money agents and cryptocurrency, and offshore operators keep serving the market from foreign licences.

Nepal: Prohibition Meets a Thriving Grey Market

In Nepal, all gambling is prohibited under Section 125 of the Muluki Criminal Code, with land-based casinos historically tolerated only for foreign tourists. Enforcement runs through website blocking by the telecom authority and payment restrictions imposed by Nepal Rastra Bank, including on crypto rails. The legal picture is laid out clearly by Nepali practitioners such as Onesphere Law Associates, who document how prosecutors stretch physical-gambling provisions to cover online activity.

The gap between law and reality is wide. Through 2025, police ran large raids tied to major offshore betting platforms, arrested operators and even charged public figures who had promoted betting apps. A 2025 directive reportedly tightened both the online ban and the rules governing land-based casinos. Filling the information vacuum are dedicated websites like OCN that track which offshore platforms accept Nepali players — a marketing ecosystem that exists precisely because the legal market does not, and one that regulators across the region are increasingly treating as part of the problem rather than a neutral guide.

Sri Lanka: The Outlier that Chose Regulation

Sri Lanka went the other way. Its Gambling Regulatory Authority Act No. 17 of 2025 created a single independent regulator that took effect on 1 December 2025, consolidating oversight of casinos, betting, offshore operations and online play under one law. Alongside it, the government raised the gambling levy from 15% to 18% and doubled the casino entry fee for locals to about US$100.

The logic was pragmatic: a parliamentary committee found that 60–70% of gambling in the country now happens online, making prohibition impractical and tax collection difficult. With the country still rebuilding its public finances and a new integrated resort casino open in Colombo, Sri Lanka is betting that a regulate-and-tax model will capture revenue and curb harm better than a ban it cannot enforce.

Where the Trend is Heading

The regional picture is one of divergence with a shared problem. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal are escalating prohibition — blocking sites, choking payment rails, and increasingly criminalising promotion and influencer marketing. Sri Lanka is pioneering the opposite: licensing, taxation and harm-reduction codes.

What unites both camps is a market that refuses to disappear. Demand keeps migrating to offshore operators, VPNs, mirror domains and stablecoins, and the affiliate-marketing layer keeps adapting faster than regulators. Expect three things to define the next phase: tighter financial-rail enforcement targeting mobile money and banks; growing pressure on global ad networks and influencers; and a live, unresolved debate over whether bans simply push the market underground — the very argument Sri Lanka, and India's own critics, are now making out loud.