Is DraftKings Legal in India?

There is nothing licensed to weigh the question against. DraftKings Inc. — the Nasdaq-listed sportsbook that operates under named state licenses across roughly 27 US states plus D.C., and under Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario and Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission registrations in Canada — has never applied for an Indian gaming license, registered a fantasy sports contest under any state law, or sought approval from India's new national regulator. It simply is not in the market. That makes the "is it legal" question easy to answer even before India's law is considered: a product that was never launched cannot be legal or illegal, only absent.

The law behind that absence changed hard this year. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, passed by Parliament in August 2025, and its implementing Rules took effect on May 1, 2026. Section 5 prohibits offering, aiding, abetting, or inducing an "online money game" anywhere in India — and the ban applies whether the underlying game is skill-based, chance-based, or a mix of both, which closes the old argument that daily fantasy sports escapes gambling law because it rewards skill. A new central body, the Online Gaming Authority of India (OGAI), sits inside the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and is responsible for classifying games and enforcing the prohibition.

What India's Law Looked Like Before May 2026

Before the national law, Indian gambling regulation ran through the colonial-era Public Gambling Act, 1867, and gambling sat constitutionally as a state subject — each state could legislate its own rules. Section 12 of the 1867 Act exempted "mere skill" games from the general gambling prohibition, and states split hard on what that meant for real-money online play. Sikkim licensed online gaming and sports betting under its own 2008 law. Nagaland licensed specific "games of skill" through 2016 legislation. Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh went the other way and banned real-money online gaming outright, skill argument or not, years before the 2025 Act existed.

The Supreme Court closed the loophole further in 2026. On May 27, 2026, the Court upheld state authority to regulate or prohibit betting and wagering involving money even where the underlying game is one of skill — meaning "it's a skill game" stopped being an automatic defense against a state betting law, on top of the new national money-game ban.

DraftKings never operated under any version of this patchwork either — not the permissive Sikkim model, not the restrictive Telangana model, and not the current national ban. There is no point in that timeline where an Indian resident could have opened a licensed DraftKings account.

The Sites Called "DraftKings India" Are Not DraftKings

Search "DraftKings India" and what turns up is not the absence a licensing check would predict — it is active websites built around the DraftKings name, offering real-money betting on the IPL, international cricket, football, and tennis to Indian visitors. One of the more visible ones advertises itself as a sportsbook and casino under a URL pattern that does not match DraftKings Inc.'s actual domain, draftkings.com, at all.

That distinction matters more than it might look. DraftKings Inc. is a public company that files with the SEC, discloses its licensed states by name, and has never operated a cricket betting market anywhere — its US sportsbook books American football, basketball, baseball, and similar US-market sports, and its DFS product never included IPL contests. A site offering IPL betting under the DraftKings name is not an unusual regional product line from a familiar company; it is a different operation using a recognizable brand to look like one.

What the real DraftKings actually is:

  • Nasdaq-listed public company, ticker DKNG
  • State-licensed sportsbook in ~27 US states plus D.C.
  • Casino product in five US states only
  • Sportsbook and casino licensed in Ontario and Alberta, Canada
  • No cricket betting market, no India license, no India launch — ever

How Safe Is Any of This for an Indian Player?

Safe is the wrong word to apply to the real DraftKings here, because the real DraftKings was never on offer — there is nothing to rate for safety because there is no product. The safety question that actually applies is about the sites using the name. A site with no traceable license, no named regulator, and no connection to the public company behind draftkings.com gives an Indian user none of what a licensed operator provides: no dispute process if a withdrawal doesn't clear, no regulator to complain to, and no way to verify who actually owns the platform holding a deposit. India's 2026 law adds a legal layer on top of that — offering or using an online money game is now a nationwide prohibition, not a state-by-state gray area, so the exposure isn't only that the money might not come back.

What's Actually Regulated in India Now

Since May 1, 2026, the honest answer for any real-money betting or gaming product — DraftKings-branded or not — is that it falls under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act's nationwide prohibition, enforced by the OGAI. Even India's own market leaders felt it: Dream11 and other domestic real-money fantasy sports platforms had to stop offering paid-entry contests once the Act took effect, because the law does not preserve a skill-game exception the way Sikkim or Nagaland once did. Esports and non-monetary social games are carved out and can keep operating; anything with a real-money entry fee or wager is not. Nothing on this page is a way to make money, and no site claiming to be DraftKings should be trusted to hold an Indian user's deposit on the strength of the name alone. 21+ where any of this would otherwise apply.