The sinister side to India’s fantasy gaming craze

Millions of sports fans around the world seek to strike it lucky by creating virtual teams from popular athletes and tracking their real-life performances in the hope of winning a cash prize. But in India, this form of entertainment appears to be turning into something much more harmful.

Fantasy gaming has gripped the nation, having “exploded in popularity” in recent years, said Al Jazeera. The online gaming industry in India is worth $1.5 billion.

However, experts are concerned that playing fantasy sports apps for fun can quickly descend into a worrying addiction, as players commonly place bets on their teams.

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The reasons behind the success of fantasy gaming apps are varied, but India’s “love for cricket has fueled the rise”, suggested the ICFAI Business School in Bangalore. Coupled with the “widespread availability of low-cost smartphones and affordable data plans”, this form of entertainment is open to millions of people, the school added.

Others attribute the boom to the slick and expensive advertising packages that gaming juggernauts have been able to roll out. An advertising report cited by Al Jazeera showed fantasy gaming apps were the “top advertisers on television during IPL-16”, the most recent Indian Premier League cricket competition, with “18 percent of the advertising share”.

Whatever the cause, the industry in India is burgeoning. A Deloitte report shows it is expected “to grow massively” in the coming years – at 30% a year until 2027, the WION news site explained.

Despite the success of fantasy gaming, all forms of gambling in India are technically illegal, as a result of the Public Gambling Act of 1867. However, the industry has thrived in a “grey area” of legislation, said Rest of World, which currently permits certain games provided they are primarily about skill. Fantasy gaming providers insist they are only offering skill-based games. While not everyone agrees, it is the lack of certainty which is proving a “threat”, the website added.

For some, the stakes can be much higher than a simple game of chance. Bhavani, a 29-year-old married woman with two children from Manali, Chennai, used online apps to play card games like rummy. After just a year of playing and betting on her games, Bhavani had “racked up losses that her husband estimated at more than 1 million Indian rupees”, or approximately £9,500, said the Hindustan Times. She told her father she was going to stop playing the games, but “a few hours later” she took her own life.

“It started slowly, with small bets,” her husband told Reuters. “My wife won a few times and then she wouldn’t stop.”

This addiction is as much a psychological issue as it is a financial one, experts say. “It is like an alcoholic who first takes alcohol to get a high, then if he doesn’t take alcohol, he gets tremors,” psychiatrist Lakshmi Vijayakumar told The Quint. “Like that, you have a withdrawal reaction, so you start playing it to get the same high. Your brain tells you that you have to do it.”

Vijayakumar told the news website she sees at least one fantasy gaming addict in her clinic “every day”, indicating the scale of the problem health professionals are facing.

While India grapples with the impacts of fantasy gaming, the issue extends across the globe. Video games have now become an internationally recognised addiction, with the World Health Organization adding “gaming disorder” to its list of conditions. It is defined as people giving priority to gaming “to the extent that it takes precedence over other interests and daily activities”.

Many of those affected are keen to see world governments crack down on the issue to save those who have been taken into the clutches of gaming and gambling, courtesy of the large corporations who continue to rake in big profits.

Some Indian states are already anxious to tackle the problem. Andhra Predesh, Telangana, Odisha and Nagaland are among those states to have banned online sports games.

The country’s Goods and Services Tax Council is taking a hardline stance to crack down on the industry’s toxic impacts. A new 28% indirect tax on online gaming, casinos and horse racing is not intended to hurt the industry, according to the country’s finance minister. However, it will mean operators have to take on more financial responsibility for the money they collect from players.

The council has said the decision is motivated by a desire to show there is “no distinction” between games of skill and games of chance, a loophole previously exploited by fantasy sport companies.

Predictably, there has been resistance from gaming giants. The decision is a “major setback” that could substantially “stunt the growth of a booming gaming industry”, said Bloomberg. It has been described as “unconstitutional, irrational and egregious” by Roland Landers, chief executive of the All India Gaming Federation.

While legislative arguments roll on, for those immersed in the world of gaming and their families, altogether different tensions are arising.

Lalji Dwivedi, a farmer from Sidhhi in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, is frequently drawn into arguments with his teenage son, who is addicted to fantasy gaming. His cricket-mad 16-year-old gets “agitated” by his father’s reluctance to give him money, and Dwivedi often finds himself eventually handing over money earned from his wife’s job as an agricultural labourer, alongside their savings, said Al Jazeera.

“I don’t earn enough money to feed my family,” he told the news website. “If my son keeps losing this much money, I don’t know how we will manage to survive.”

This article first appeared in The Week’s Global Digest newsletter. Sign up for a preview of the international news agenda, sent to your inbox every Monday.