iGaming bill proposed in India

Member of the Parliament Shashi Tharoor introduced a bill to lay out proper regulations for the online segment.

India.- The online segment continues to grow and governments all around the world are looking for new ways to control it. That’s why senior Congress leader and a member of parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, Shashi Tharoor, has just introduced a bill in the Lok Sabha (the lower house) to regulate the online gaming sector.

According to MP Tharoor, there is an urgent need to lay out a statutory framework with government oversight, instead of just letting the industry regulate itself. That way, the authorities will make sure service providers are following licence conditions, especially in regards to suspicious betting pattern tracking and control over the money flow.

“The main purpose of my bill is to preserve the integrity of sports. The bill is primarily divided into two parts for this purpose. One part recognises the offence of sports fraud and prescribes a special procedure to deal with it. The other part acknowledges the fact that the increasing commercial nature of sports increases financial incentives for vested interests to manipulate sporting events, therefore it provides for the regulation of online sports betting activities,” Tharoor told The Economic Times.

“There is an urgent need to have government intervention in order to streamline the industry, preserve integrity of sports and eliminate sports fraud,” said Roland Landers, All India Gaming Federation (AIGF) CEO. “…AIGF is committed to dealing with issues pertaining to online gaming industry.”