Emblazoned across the jerseys of the Indian Cricket Team is “Dream 11” in bright purple. The richest and most powerful cricket team in the world, India has its pick of sponsors. They have been sponsored in the past by Indian Conglomerate Sahara, Nike, Unicorn startup Byjus, and many others.
When Dream 11 made their bid to join this elite list, they paid a massive INR 358 crores ($42.5 million) to have their name placed front and centre on the Indian jersey for a three year period. Why? Because Dream 11 is the closest thing you can get to legal online betting in India, and in a cricket crazed country of one-and-a-half billion people, that means big money.
What do we mean by Dream 11 being the ‘closest’ thing to legal online betting? Much like in Pakistan, betting is prohibited by law in India. But Dream 11 bills itself not as a betting company but as a “fantasy sports” platform. The concept of fantasy sports is pretty simple. You sign up on a website, you spend money to “buy” certain players for a fantasy team of your choosing, and then you gain points depending on how well those players perform. You can buy or sell those players to others with fantasy teams and prices go up and down depending on how many points each player has managed to get.
This might sound a lot like gambling considering you make and lose money depending on how well a particular player performs on a particular day. The only difference is that legally, fantasy sports are considered a game of skill since it involves participants analysing and deliberating on which players might perform well or not. Because of this key difference, it does not fall within the legal definition of gambling.
It is one of many techniques that gambling platforms have used in the past two decades to advertise on the field in the world of cricket. Going the route of a fantasy sports website is one method but it is not the only one. Take Pakistan as an example. Until last year, the HBL PSL and international cricket in Pakistan had been infiltrated by betting websites that were advertising through surrogate websites. It was a trend that caught wind fast, but came to an abrupt end after a number of star players including former Captains Babar Azam and Muhammad Rizwan took a moral stand over the issue, eventually leading to the end of betting websites advertising in cricket in Pakistan.
However, murmurs are beginning that there is a move to bring back surrogate advertising. The details on this are not clear, and the PCB is not saying a word. However, it is worth noticing that the ban on this advertising was made by the government last time and the PCB did not want it. This time around, however, the Chairman of the PCB is also the Federal Minister for Interior and has some sway where it matters.
While the details may not be here yet, it is worth looking back and understanding surrogate advertising and the tensions it caused in Pakistan cricket only last year. How does this work, what happened to bring it to an end, was the decision too hasty, and could we see a comeback?
Surrogate advertising
Very briefly put, surrogate advertising is a loophole. For example in India there has long been a law in some states that bans the advertising of alcohol. So what alcohol companies do to get around this is launch a product with very similar brand recognition to their booze. Bacardi famously launched Bacardi records so that any time they air an ad for their record label, people would think about their alcohol which they are not allowed to advertise on TV.
It is the same with cricket and betting. For example, one of the PCB’s main sponsors was Dafa News. Now, a website called Dafa News definitely existed and was a news website. But it was owned and operated by DafaBet, which is a well known betting company. While the law does not allow DafaBet to sponsor in Pakistan, there is nothing stopping a news website like Dafa News from sponsoring. Hence, a loophole. Any time a person looking at Dafa News ads googles it, they will be led to the DafaBet website even though a shell website called DafaNews does exist. In 2022, other than Islamabad United and Peshawar Zalmi, all of the teams in the HBL PSL had a surrogate sponsor. For example, Multan Sultans was sponsored by Wolf777 which was a surrogate for Wolf777Bet and 1XBAT was a surrogate for 1XBET.
And these websites were paying the franchises big money to put their name on their shirts. Everybody was happy, that is, until the players resisted. Take the case of the Multan Sultans.
As reported by Profit in November last year, when Wolf777 News sponsored the Multan Sultan for a reportedly whopping Rs 10 crores for two years, the team’s captain Muhammad Rizwan asked the management whether it was true that this was for a betting website.
“The management told him this wasn’t the case and Rizwan played with the logo for the first few matches. But he is a religious fellow and the doubt had crept into his mind so he asked a religious scholar for a fatwa. When the scholar told him it wasn’t allowed, Rizwan refused to wear the logo leading to a serious dispute with the team management. In the end, however, he got his way and taped over the logo when he came out to play the next day,” one former captain of the cricket team told Profit.
On top of this, Rizwan was not the only player rejecting these sponsors. According to one source, Babar Azam was offered a massive contract of over Rs 25 crore to be sponsored by 1XBat, but advised by Saya Corps, he also declined the lucrative offer. For the players this was a matter of both principle and their image. But for the PSL franchises and the PCB it was a bone of contention because they were losing out on big sponsorship contracts. It was also at this point that Saya Corps reportedly began lobbying with the government to have these websites banned, which they succeeded in. On the 31st of October last week, the caretaker government also announced a crackdown on these websites.
What the ban means
The drama that followed meant eventually these websites were banned. By January 2024, only a few months after Profit broke the story, the Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) directed the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to ensure there would be no surrogate advertising during the forthcoming edition of the HBL-Pakistan Super League.
It is an order that has been followed through on. In fact, the anger regarding this has not quickly subsided. Just recently, a petition was filed in the Peshawar High Court alleging players need to be stopped from wearing sponsorship of these surrogate websites even when they play cricket leagues outside Pakistan. It is enough of an issue for player image that earlier this year, Pakistan’s test captain Shan Masood asked his English County team Yorkshire, of which he is captain, to not place the DafaBet logo on the collar of his shirt.
The reality is Pakistani players can refuse to do this on their own accord even on moral grounds, but it will not take these websites out of the game. In fact, they will remain very much a part of international cricket and will bring money into the game as well. Internationally, gambling is a big earner for sports. In 2023 alone, the sports betting industry made $11 billion in revenue in just the USA, a market cricket has been desperately trying to break into.
Cricket’s relationship with sports betting has been strained. Because of the analog nature of the sport, many people fear the infiltration of such websites could lead to increased incidents of spot fixing, an issue that is particularly sensitive for the Pakistan Cricket Team since the 2010 scandal in England.
There really are only two ways to go about this. The first is to say it is not a risk worth taking and forgo the revenue that sports betting can bring to a sport. The other is to regularise it, which will also help with keeping checks and balances. Countries like India have also found workarounds. This is not to say these are good ideas, but with an increasing focus on monetising the game of cricket Pakistan needs to keep up otherwise it will fall behind further in what is already a losing race with countries like India, England, and Australia. In countries like Australia, where gambling is legal, the annual sports gambling revenue for 2024 is projected at $4.54 billion.
Why the franchises will be unhappy
There is a very good and logical reason for not wanting surrogate advertising in cricket. One must also, however, consider the fact that franchises of the HBL PSL are losing out on some big money here, and they are already stuck in a financial model that they consider unfair.
The revenue sharing model that dictates the tournament is deeply flawed. The way it works is that the six franchises participating in the tournament agreed to a 10-year contract to lease rights to the franchise for different amounts. They pay this fee in yearly instalments. The highest single payment by a team is around Rs 1.07 billion by the Multan Sultans, although the second highest payment is significantly less at Rs 44.2 crores.
In exchange for this, the PCB organises the tournament, provides grounds, accommodation, supplies, and bears other costs such as broadcasting. Meanwhile the teams are responsible for paying their own players and staff. The tournament itself makes money through broadcasting, gate receipts, sponsorships, and more. Now the revenue from these sources is all put into a central pool which is then divided between the teams and the board. Each team gets around 15% of this central revenue pool and the board gets 5%, but they also get the entirety of the franchise fees.
With negotiation, things have gotten better over time. In 2023, the HBL PSL had a central revenue pool of Rs 5.67 billion, which is the highest in its history. However, this amount of money is still not enough to cover the costs for most of the franchises, and the bigger ones are still facing losses. Within the HBL PSL, one big avenue for these franchises is advertising revenue they can earn, and sports betting websites were giving them big money. As mentioned, Multan Sultans alone had signed a deal worth Rs 10 crore with Wolf777, and 1XBAT had made an even larger agreement with Karachi Kings and were offering extra money for representation from Babar Azam.
Next year, the stage will be set for the HBL PSL franchises to go up for rebidding. In this process, as the PCB negotiates with the existing owners, it will be interesting to see whether or not this becomes a sticking point for the franchises.