SPONSORSHIP TIES SEVERED
BCCI’s sponsorship deal with Dream11 was worth INR 358 crores © AFP
With the passage of Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, the BCCI’s sponsorship deal with Dream11, the largest real money gaming company in the world, has become untenable. It was only inevitable that the BCCI and Dream11 end the association. The continuation of the sponsorship deal, worth INR 358 crore, would have been illegal otherwise.
The BCCI has already announced the termination of the partnership. “BCCI and Dream 11 are discontinuing their relationship after the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, was passed. BCCI will ensure not to indulge with any such organisations ahead in future,” the BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said. A spokesperson for Dream11 did not offer a comment.
The initiative to end the deal, it is understood, was mutual. It was important not just for Dream11, but also for the BCCI to end the sponsorship since the new government law makes the advertisement of fantasy gaming illegal. The onus is also on the company on the platform where the real money gaming is promoted.
Dream Sports, parent company of Dream11, had signed a three-year jersey sponsorship deal with the BCCI in 2023. With the Asia Cup round the corner, the Indian team will be left without a jersey sponsor unless the BCCI signs up with a company in the next fortnight. The Asia Cup starts in UAE on September 9.
Salient features of the bill are:
Complete ban on offering, operating, or facilitating online money games, irrespective of whether based on skill, chance, or both.
Ban on advertising and promotion of money games across all forms of media.
Ban on financial transactions linked to online money games; banks and payment systems barred from processing such payments.
Empowerment to block access to unlawful gaming platforms under the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Once the bill was made into an act recently, the banks are understood to have even blocked the pathway for any transaction with the gaming companies.
© Cricbuzz
