Is It Legal to Predict Cricket for Free in India? What PROGA Actually Says

If you've followed any of the coverage of India's online gaming law from the last year, you've probably absorbed a vague, slightly anxious impression: something got banned, Dream11 and Probo were involved, the Enforcement Directorate raided a bunch of companies, and now everyone's confused about what's actually still allowed. That confusion is doing a lot of unnecessary work, because the actual legal line PROGA draws is much narrower and more specific than the headlines suggest — and it has a direct, important answer for anyone wondering whether a free, no-money prediction app is fine to use.

What PROGA actually is

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 received presidential assent in August 2025 and took effect as law on October 1, 2025, with its full Rules notified on May 1, 2026 — which is the date most people should actually treat as "when this became real" in practical terms, since that's when the Online Gaming Authority of India (OGAI) was formally constituted to oversee registration, classification, and enforcement.

It's a single, central law, which itself was a significant shift. Before PROGA, a handful of states — Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Telangana — had already restricted real-money fantasy sports locally, but enforcement was a patchwork, and platforms based in other states could often keep operating nationally with some legal cover. PROGA replaced that patchwork entirely with one nationwide rule, removing the state-by-state ambiguity that real-money platforms had been navigating for years.

The specific legal change that mattered most

Here's the part that actually reshaped the entire industry, and it's worth being precise about it: for roughly a decade, Dream11 and similar platforms had successfully argued in Indian courts — winning multiple times, including at the Supreme Court — that fantasy sports was a "game of skill," not gambling, because the outcome depended primarily on a player's knowledge and judgment rather than pure chance. That distinction mattered enormously under the old legal framework, because games of skill were generally treated as legal even when money was involved, while games of chance for money were treated as gambling.

PROGA's Section 2(1)(g) eliminates that distinction for one specific category: any game — explicitly stated as "whether based on skill, chance, or both" — where a player pays an entry fee, deposits money, or otherwise stakes value with the expectation of a monetary return, counts as a prohibited "online money game." The skill argument simply stops being relevant the moment real money is staked for a real-money return. That's why Dream11's seven prior Supreme Court wins establishing fantasy sports as a game of skill stopped protecting its real-money contests — PROGA isn't asking the skill-vs-chance question at all anymore. It's asking a much simpler question: is money being staked for a monetary return? If yes, it's banned, full stop, regardless of how much skill is involved.

The part that actually answers the "is free prediction legal" question

This is the section of PROGA that gets skipped in almost every piece of coverage, because most of the coverage is written about the companies that got banned, not about what's still explicitly fine. PROGA's framework draws a real distinction between "online money games" (prohibited, full stop) and "online social games" — and the Rules define social games as online games that do not involve staking money or other stakes with the expectation of winning a monetary or equivalent return, may charge a flat subscription or access fee that isn't itself a stake on an outcome, and are offered for entertainment, recreation, or skill-development purposes.

That's not a loose interpretation or a workaround — it's the explicit, named alternative category the law itself sets up opposite the banned one. And critically, registration with OGAI, the new regulatory body, is optional rather than mandatory for games in this category. India's IT Secretary, S. Krishnan, said as much directly: "Most games which aren't money games can function without any obligation such as registration. That is optional." That's about as clear a green light as a law like this typically gives — no licensing requirement, no mandatory registration, no compliance burden beyond simply not staking money.

What this meant in practice for real-money platforms

It's worth walking through what actually happened to the major platforms, because the contrast makes the "social games" exemption easier to understand by comparison.

Dream11 didn't shut down — it pulled all real-money contests in India and rebuilt around advertising and brand sponsorships (Swiggy, Astrotalk, Tata Neu were among the early partners), keeping its roughly 10 million daily active users engaged through sponsored, non-cash contests instead of entry-fee pools. Existing wallet balances could still be withdrawn; new cash deposits for fantasy contests could not.

Howzat, with more than 4 crore users, switched to a chips-based system — virtual currency used to keep playing, with no cash withdrawal tied to it. User reaction to that switch has been genuinely mixed; plenty of app store reviews show frustration about chips not translating into anything tangible, even as the platform itself stayed fully compliant by removing the monetary stake entirely.

Probo, a real-money prediction app rather than a fantasy platform, didn't get the option of a clean pivot. It suspended operations after PROGA took effect, and the Enforcement Directorate's Gurugram office has since provisionally attached roughly ₹401.9 crore in assets tied to the company, based on allegations from multiple FIRs that it was operating gambling disguised as "online gaming." That's the sharpest possible illustration of where the legal line actually sits: a prediction app that took real money and offered real payouts became one of the most aggressively enforced cases in the entire post-PROGA crackdown, precisely because of the money mechanic, not because predicting outcomes is itself illegal.

Polymarket and Kalshi, the two largest real-money prediction markets in the world, got caught by the same underlying logic even though neither is a traditional "fantasy" platform. India ordered ISPs to block Polymarket outright in May 2026 under Section 69A of the IT Act — the same provision used to ban TikTok — after classifying prediction markets as a form of prohibited online money gaming. Kalshi added India to its own restricted-jurisdictions list in June 2026, reportedly to get ahead of a similar government order. Cricket was a significant factor in how visible a target both platforms had become: a single IPL match reportedly drove $27.7 million in combined trading volume across the two platforms, which is exactly the kind of real-money-at-scale activity PROGA and the broader regulatory push were aimed at.

Where free, no-money prediction apps actually stand

Lay RIVAL's model against the Section 2 framework directly: there's no entry fee to join a league, no deposit of any kind, no in-app currency that simulates money, no payout — winning a prediction adds to a visible accuracy record, and nothing else changes hands. That's not an edge case squeezed into the social-games definition; it's close to the textbook example the Rules describe — entertainment and recreation, no monetary stake, no monetary-equivalent return.

This is genuinely different from the Howzat-style chips pivot, which is worth being precise about. Chips systems exist specifically because the platform used to involve real money and needed a compliant replacement after the fact — they're a retrofit. A product built from the start with no monetary mechanic at all was never staking anything to begin with, so there's no retrofit required and no leftover user frustration about chips that don't convert to anything, because there was never an expectation of conversion in the first place.

What this doesn't mean

It's worth being honest about the limits here too. The "social games" exemption applies specifically to products with no monetary stake or monetary-equivalent return — it doesn't create a blanket exemption for anything labeled "prediction," and it doesn't mean every free-sounding app is automatically compliant if it has some hidden monetary mechanic, a withdrawable point system, or a structure that functions like a stake even if it's not labeled one. The law cares about substance, not labeling. A platform that calls its tokens "chips" but quietly allows them to be cashed out, traded, or converted to something of monetary value would still fall under the "online money game" definition regardless of what it's called.

It's also worth noting that PROGA's constitutional validity is still being challenged — the Supreme Court has heard petitions disputing the law, though it has specifically declined to rule on whether fantasy sports counts as skill or chance in this context, since PROGA's framework doesn't depend on that distinction in the first place. That legal challenge is about the law's overall validity, not about reopening the skill-vs-chance argument, and it doesn't change the practical reality for anyone running or using a genuinely no-money platform today.

India isn't acting alone on this

It's worth knowing India's crackdown on real-money prediction isn't an isolated domestic decision — it's part of a much broader international pattern that's accelerated through 2026. More than ten governments have now directly banned or restricted Polymarket or Kalshi, with roughly seven of those actions happening in 2026 alone, including Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Indonesia, and Brazil alongside India. Nearly every one of those bans rests on the same underlying classification: regulators in each of these countries have concluded that real-money prediction markets are functionally unlicensed gambling, not a financial product, regardless of how the platforms themselves describe what they do.

That global pattern matters for understanding where this is headed, because it suggests India's position isn't a temporary or unusually aggressive outlier — it's consistent with how a large and growing number of national regulators are independently arriving at the same conclusion about real-money prediction specifically. A free, no-money model doesn't have that classification problem anywhere, in India or elsewhere, because the entire basis for calling something "unlicensed gambling" depends on money being staked in the first place.

The bottom line

If your actual question is "can I legally use a free app to predict IPL matches, or anything else, with my friends, without staking money," the answer under the current law is straightforwardly yes — and it's been the explicit, named answer in the Rules since they were notified on May 1, 2026, even though that part of the story got a fraction of the coverage that Dream11's pivot and the ED's raids received. The risk PROGA was written to address is specifically the monetary stake. Remove that, and the rest of the law isn't reaching for you.

Frequently asked questions

Did PROGA ban predicting cricket outcomes?

No — PROGA bans staking money on outcomes with the expectation of a monetary return. Predicting an outcome with no money involved falls under the law's "social games" category, not its banned "online money games" category.

What's the difference between an "online money game" and a "social game" under PROGA?

An online money game involves staking money or value with the expectation of a monetary return, regardless of skill — these are banned. A social game has no monetary stake and no monetary-equivalent payout, and is offered for entertainment, recreation, or skill-development — these are explicitly allowed, with optional rather than mandatory registration.

Do free prediction apps need to register with OGAI?

According to India's IT Secretary, registration with the Online Gaming Authority of India is optional for games that aren't money games. A free app with no monetary stake or payout falls into that category.

Why did Probo get hit so hard by enforcement if Dream11 just pivoted?

Probo took real money and offered real monetary payouts as a prediction app, which placed it squarely inside PROGA's banned "online money game" category, leading to a suspension of operations and roughly ₹401.9 crore in assets provisionally attached by the Enforcement Directorate. Dream11 was able to pivot because it removed the monetary stake from its fantasy contests rather than continuing to operate one.

Is a chips-based system like Howzat's the same thing as a free, no-money app?

Functionally similar in that neither involves a cash payout, but structurally different. Howzat's chips system is a retrofit — a replacement built after the platform's original real-money model was banned. A product built from the start with no monetary mechanic, like RIVAL, was never staking anything in the first place, so there's no leftover expectation of cashing out that chips users have reported being frustrated by.

Does this exemption apply to prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket if they removed real money?

The "social games" exemption is about the absence of a monetary stake and payout, not about the type of product. In principle, a no-money prediction product of any kind could fit the same category — but Kalshi and Polymarket are built specifically around real-money or crypto trading, which is the opposite of what the exemption requires, which is part of why both faced restrictions rather than qualifying for it.

Is PROGA being legally challenged right now?

Yes, its constitutional validity has been challenged in the Supreme Court, but the Court has specifically said it won't revisit whether fantasy sports counts as skill or chance, since PROGA's "online money game" definition doesn't depend on that distinction. The challenge is about the law's broader validity, not about reopening a path for skill-based real-money games.

For the full story of what happened to Dream11 specifically, see our complete breakdown. For how this affects Kalshi and Polymarket access from India directly, see our Kalshi and Polymarket alternative guides. And for the IPL-specific version of this question, see our full IPL prediction app landscape.