CHENNAI: Last Saturday, the Road Safety World Series concluded with India Legends coasting past Sri Lanka Legends. The Sachin Tendulkar-led side opted to bat first, making 195 before bowling out the opposition for 162. What, though, caught the eye in Raipur wasn’t the names emblazoned on the back of the players’ jerseys. It was what was written on the front of the players’ jerseys — 1XBET.
After opting for a subtle ‘1xBAT professional sportsblog’ (surrogate advertising) in the form of a pop-up advertisement during the Asia Cup and other events, the betting company were one of the sponsors for as many as three teams at the Road Safety World Series. Apart from Sri Lanka Legends, they occupied substantial real estate on the jerseys of both South Africa Legends and West Indies Legends.
Considering it’s predominantly a betting company, 1XBET is already flouting a few laws by continuing to operate in the Indian market. Spooked by the number of advertisements taken out by betting companies, the Central government even issued multiple strongly-worded advisories but that has seemingly had no effect.
In fact, the ecosystem doesn’t just exist but it thrives. That’s a claim made by 1Win’s affiliate page on Instagram. “This region (India) is relevant as it has a high interest in gambling,” one of their stories informs viewers. Other companies also exist in India via surrogate advertising.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Indian Super League (ISL), whose latest iteration began in Kochi on Friday. From cryptocurrency (socios.com) to sports betting news blogs (PariMatch News) to, even, seemingly a news website (Stake News) of stake.com (an online casino enterprise), they are all in India.
Coming back to 1XBET, they are seemingly making a big play to grab even more eyeballs. Their latest move involves securing the services of Eva Elfie, an adult performer. On her Instagram page, Elfie posted a video of her promoting the company. “Bet you didn’t expect this!,” she posted. “I’m the new ambassador of @1xbeteng which means that there is a lot of cool stuff coming up. I can’t tell you everything now, but I’m sure that you gonna like it.”
The focus on 1XBET is paramount because they have fallen foul of regulators worldwide. They were run out of UK partly ‘because of the use of pornography to promote its service,’ as football investigations website Josimar noted in an article. They also roped in the likes of World Cup winners Suresh Raina and Yuvraj Singh, both of whom played in the India Legends side at the Road Safety World Series.
This daily has learned that what 1XBET did with the three teams is outside the ambit of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). It’s up to the government to do something as this is a case of a sponsorship agreement.
On Monday, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued a fresh advisory apropos betting companies. “It had come to the notice of the Government that several sports channels on television, as well as on OTT platforms, have recently been showing advertisements of offshore online betting platforms as well as their surrogate news websites. The Advisories were supplemented with evidence which contained direct and surrogate advertisements of offshore betting platforms such as Fairplay, PariMatch, Betway, Wolf 777, and 1xBet.
“In the Advisories, the Ministry has informed that online offshore betting platforms are now using news websites as a surrogate product to advertise the betting platforms on digital media. In such cases, the Ministry has found that the logos of surrogate news websites bear striking resemblance to betting platforms. Moreover, the Ministry has stated that neither the betting platforms nor the news websites are registered under any legal authority in India. Such websites are promoting betting and gambling under the garb of news as surrogate advertising. The Advisories issued by the Ministry stated that since betting and gambling is illegal in most parts of the country, advertisements of these betting platforms as well as their surrogates are also illegal. The Advisories relied upon the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act 2019, Cable TV Network Regulation Act 1995 and the IT Rules, 2021.”
So, does this mean advertisements of these “news websites” stop? Does this also mean sports teams cannot have sponsorship agreements with the same “news websites?” Only time will tell.