Four months after India’s online gaming rules took effect, the sector’s new registration window is empty. As of September 1, 2026, no game had been formally registered under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, according to information the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology gave the Central Information Commission.
The disclosure, reported by The New Indian Express and carried by MediaNama, lands at a critical moment for an industry that was effectively banned from real-money play. It also clarifies what the current framework was always designed to do: register a much smaller set of permitted formats, not the real-money gaming services that once dominated India’s market.
What the zero actually measures
The law prohibits all online money games, related advertising, and the facilitation of fund transfers by financial institutions, regardless of whether a game involves skill or chance. It does not provide a licensing or registration path for online money games.
Only two categories are eligible for registration:
- E-sports, which are exempt from the ban and are meant to be promoted through government guidelines, training academies, and research centres.
- Online social games, which do not involve monetary stakes but may charge a one-time subscription or access fee that is not a wager.
Neither category has produced a single registration so far. The Online Gaming Authority of India, set up in April 2026, has recorded zero certificates in its first four months. At the same time, MeitY reported 201 online gaming-related complaints by September 2026, though it did not specify their nature.
Why the empty register may be structural
The draft rules notified in April 2026 require registration certificates for e-sports and social games, valid for up to five years. They also set up a three-level grievance process: the gaming service provider, then a Grievance Appellate Committee, and finally the Online Gaming Authority. Registrations can be cancelled or suspended for non-compliance, false disclosures, or if a game is found to involve wagering.
But the zero figure is not simply a compliance failure. The registration framework does not accommodate the real-money gaming platforms that represented 85.7% of sector revenue—about $3.2 billion—mainly from fantasy sports and skill-based games linked to events such as the IPL. The law replaced the Information Technology Rules, 2021, which had relied on self-regulatory bodies to certify games, with an outright ban and a central authority.
The banked size of the pre-ban market was roughly Rs 1.7 lakh crore, or about $23 billion, with an estimated 1.3 lakh employees across 1,900 companies. With real-money formats excluded by design, the registration list was always likely to be thin in the early months.
What media and platform teams should watch
For entertainment marketers and platform operators, the empty register matters because it removes a large category of ad-supported and sponsorship-driven inventory that had become part of the media mix around live sport. Brands that previously bought fantasy-sports, rummy or poker placements now need to track legal challenges and any eventual applications for permitted formats.
The affected parties have challenged the Act in the Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi High Courts. Until those cases move, the timeline for registrations—even in e-sports and social games—may stay uncertain. The first signal to monitor is whether permitted formats begin applying, or whether the authority issues clarifications that make registration more practical.
Source: MEDIANAMA
