Is Paid Fantasy Sports Legal in Asia?

India: the nationwide ban on online money games

If you played paid fantasy cricket in India a few years ago, the ground has moved under you. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 imposes a complete ban on all forms of online money games, and that phrase is deliberately wide. It covers games of chance, games of skill, and any mix of the two¹. Fantasy sports, which had been treated as a game of skill, now fall inside the ban to the extent they involve monetary stakes⁵.

The Act does not just target the contest. It also bans the advertising, promotion and facilitation of online money games¹. That is why you may have noticed fantasy apps pulling their paid contests, changing their branding, or shutting down real-money formats entirely. The prohibition applies to all online money games regardless of whether the underlying game involves skill or chance⁴.

The practical effect for a player is simple. If there is any cash involved, it is illegal⁶. That includes online poker, rummy and fantasy sports with real money on the line. The old argument that fantasy cricket was a game of skill, and therefore outside gambling law, no longer helps you. The Act was written specifically to close that gap.

For context on how quickly this changed: the Supreme Court of India had ruled in the past that games like rummy and fantasy sports are games of skill and hence do not fall under traditional gambling laws⁷. Dream11's single full-match format had been recognized as a game of skill, not gambling, betting or wagering⁸. The 2025 Act overrides that position for real-money play.

If you want the wider picture of what is and is not allowed across the region, see gambling laws in Asia and is online gambling legal in Asia.

Penalties for players: what the law does not cover

Here is the part most people get wrong. The Act is aimed at the businesses that offer, advertise and facilitate online money games, not at the person tapping a screen at home. The enforcement you have seen has been directed at operators and platforms, not at individual players being prosecuted for entering a contest.

That does not mean there is no risk. The practical exposure for a player is to your money and your account. Platforms that keep offering paid contests after the ban are operating outside the law, and when they are shut down or blocked, balances can be frozen or lost. If you are playing on an app that is openly ignoring the ban, you are trusting your money to a business that has already decided the rules do not apply to it.

For a fuller picture of what players actually face across the region, including fines and other consequences in different jurisdictions, see penalties for gambling in Asia.

The cleanest way to think about it: the law does not cover you personally for playing, but it does not protect you either. There is no regulator standing behind a banned platform if it decides not to pay out.

Fantasy sports in Japan: who pays the prize decides legality

Japan takes a different approach, and it comes down to a single question: who is paying the prize, and under what authority?

Gambling in Japan is basically illegal, but not all gambling is illegal. Some forms are legal under separate laws, either to respect everyday entertainment or to return proceeds to social welfare⁹. The legal public gambling in Japan is organized by government agencies and is limited to:

• Boat races
• Horse racing
• Biking
• Bike racing²

Residents can wager on those, and they are run by authorities.

The mechanism matters. Betting on horse racing would normally constitute the crime of gambling, but it is authorized by the Horse Racing Act as a special law. If you bet by methods other than those prescribed in that special law, the gambling offense is established³. In other words, the special law carves out a narrow, defined channel. Anything outside that channel is back to being illegal.

That is why a private fantasy contest offering cash prizes is on shaky ground. It is not one of the authorized public racing products, and it is not being run by an authority under a special law. The Japan Open Poker Tour states plainly that it is not legally possible to offer cash prizes for the winner of a poker tournament in Japan, and that gambling-related activities are restricted by law¹⁰. Instead, prizes are offered in the form of USDT (Tether) or a player contract¹⁰.

Esports betting is in the same place. It stays unlawful in Japan, with only a select variety of gambling activities allowed, and there are no plans to legalize it in the near term².

So when you are looking at a fantasy contest in Japan, ask who is paying. If the prize comes from an authorized public racing operator under its special law, it is fine. If a private company is putting up cash for a contest of skill, it is not one of the carved-out channels, and the gambling offense applies.

For the country-level picture, see can I gamble in Japan.

State-level rules before the ban: the seven states that already restricted fantasy sports

Before the national law, fantasy sports were permitted in certain states on the basis that they were games of skill. That is now overridden by the PROG Act to the extent those games include monetary stakes⁵. But the state map is still useful, because it tells you where the pressure was already building.

The states that had banned fantasy sports included Assam, Sikkim, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh⁸. Odisha in particular did not allow online fantasy sports platforms¹². Telangana, Meghalaya and Nagaland also restricted fantasy sports before the national ban.

Karnataka is the interesting one. Its state law banning fantasy sports was quashed, which left online fantasy gaming out of the ambit of the new gambling restrictions¹³. Tamil Nadu took a different route: its 2021 amendment restricted online gaming platforms but continued the exemption for games of skill, so fantasy sports platforms continued to operate within the state¹².

The reason this history matters is that it explains why the national law was framed so broadly. State-by-state rulings had produced a patchwork, with some courts treating fantasy sports as skill and others banning them. The 2025 Act cut through all of it by banning online money games outright, regardless of skill or chance¹.

If you are trying to work out whether a particular format counts as skill or chance under the older rules, see games of skill vs games of chance.

Self-exclusion and player protections under the Act

One practical question people ask is whether they can still block themselves from platforms. The answer is that self-exclusion tools exist, but they are built around licensed and regulated operators, and the Indian online money game sector is now largely outside that framework.

In Singapore, for example, self-exclusion applies to jackpot machine rooms at private clubs, and there is a step-by-step process to apply¹⁴. In the Philippines, the regulator runs a Player Exclusion Program that gives patrons the option of barring themselves or their relatives from all gaming venues or sites¹⁵. These are the kinds of protections that come with a licensed market.

The general concept of self-exclusion, where a player asks an operator or regulator to block them from gambling, is well established in regulated markets¹⁶. The problem in India is that once paid fantasy sports and other online money games are banned, there is no licensed operator left to run a self-exclusion scheme for them. The platforms still operating are doing so outside the law, and an unlicensed operator has no obligation to honor a self-exclusion request.

If you are looking for the tools that do exist across the region, see casino exclusion orders and legal self-exclusion in Asia.

For visitors and foreign residents, the position is the same as for citizens on this point. The ban applies to the games, not to your nationality. If you are in India and you play a paid fantasy contest, you are in the same position as anyone else. For how the rules differ for visitors more generally, see gambling law for visitors and expats in Asia.

What this means if you are planning to play

If you are in India, the paid fantasy sports era is over for now. Free contests with no cash entry and no cash prize are not online money games, so they are not caught by the ban⁴. Anything with real money on either side, whether an entry fee or a cash prize, falls under the Act.

If you are in Japan, the question is who is paying. Public racing run by authorities is legal². A private contest with a cash prize is not one of the carved-out channels, and the gambling offense applies³. Operators work around this by paying in USDT or player contracts rather than cash¹⁰.

If you are elsewhere in Asia and wondering how your jurisdiction treats fantasy sports, the same two questions usually decide it: is there real money involved, and who is running the contest? Those two answers will tell you most of what you need to know.