For years, Indian online gambling sites have been willing bedfellows. The IPL association with a business that witnesses exponential growth now is strengthened even further by Dream11, also partly owned by the major Chinese new economy company Tencent, winning the bid to this year’s IPL title rights.
The nationalistic outcry that witnessed mobile phone producer Vivo step aside in the face of India-China hostilities and the LAC has led queasier to this association with Dream11.
A cry at the turn of the millennium over bookmakers inducing cricket players to throw games and fix spot events led to BCCI banning a few players, including a captain.
But Indian cricket has been freely cavorting with gambling since the IPL’s advent. The show keeps going on in spite of the image of the cash-rich league shredded in the Supreme Court over betting shenanigans that were linked to two IPL franchises, which then were banned for two years.
The paradoxical stand of the game running with the hare and hunting with the hound stands that are exposed by legitimizing of gambling interests has gone online in the era of expanding Internet after a semi crackdown on mobile illegal bookmakers.
While the politicians stood to gain the most from links with bookmakers as all sports betting in the country happened underground, IPL’s endorsement of online betting lends this strange legitimacy even when the internet explodes with betting.
Players, including the modern game’s leading icon MS Dhoni and the BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, are endorsing gambling websites as brand ambassadors. Certainly, Indian laws are to be blamed for the stigma attached traditionally to gambling with horse racing an exception.
Proposals to legalize sports betting in India are featuring dust in the face of the wall of Indian hypocrisy. It is a pity that this ambiguous status quo is buttressed by a moral attitude.
India can take an honest look at legalizing betting while match-fixing must be shot down with the keenest eye.
