Dream11 which is the title sponsor for IPL 2020 has to again appear before Supreme Court after a Special Leave Petition (SLP) was filed in Supreme Court on September 4, 2020.
Earlier, Dream11 had to appear before Rajasthan High Court where Public Interest litigation (PIL) was filed by Chandresh Sankhla to ban the app on the basis that fantasy sports amounted to gambling.
However, the Rajasthan High Court had refused to grant the prayers of Petitioner on the basis of earlier decisions of High Courts of Bombay and Punjab and Haryana on the same issue. There, the courts had held that “fantasy sports are games of skill and do not amount to gambling.”
This SLP has been filed by social activist and financial consultant Avinash Mehrotra praying the Apex Court to re-consider and examine in deep the observation passed by High Courts which stated that fantasy sports are game of skill and not chance.
Notably, Dream11 has earlier for 6 seasons of IPL has had the opportunity to be associated with BCCI. This time Dream11, a company funded by Chinese company Tencent, had replaced Vivo, another Chinese company as the title sponsor.
While welcoming the ban on online gambling Apps by Andhra Pradesh Government this month the businessman, Raj Kundra had tweeted that “My stand on this is Real Money Gaming (RMG) needs to be regulated otherwise everyone and anyone can create a company overnight using the archaic game of skill rules. It’s difficult to work in a country that has separate rules per state! One Rule One India”, the post read.
Mehrotra on filing of SLP spoke to Outlook India and stated that “Online gaming and gambling, where real money is involved, is a risk to society, and leads to hard earned money being lost by a lot of people. This has serious social consequences, and should not be permitted till such time proper regulations are brought into force.” (Outlook, September 4, 2020).
Mehrotra seeks clarity on regulations governing online gambling and online sports fantasy games in particular.
Currently, three Indian Crickters- MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Saurav Ganguly endorse three different online sports fantasy games. On earlier occasions, plea has also been filed against Kohli for endorsement of online gambling games such as Rummy.