Game Over: RMG ban leaves adland without its biggest players

Shah Rukh Khan endorsing A23, Shahid Kapoor fronting PokerBaazi in its ‘Let’s Poker’ campaign, Hrithik Roshan leading RummyCircle promotions, and the Bollywood-meets-cricket spectacle of Dream11’s 2025 IPL ad film ‘Aapki Team Mein Kaun?’—all of it now belongs to history. None of these celebrity-driven campaigns will air on television or stream online again. The Centre’s blanket ban on Real Money Gaming (RMG) platforms and their advertising has frozen budgets overnight, silenced a decade of high-decibel campaigns, and left India’s creative economy staring at a cliff.

For over 10 years, RMG and fantasy gaming brands were among the most aggressive advertisers, pouring crores into agencies, production houses, and celebrity tie-ups. With the passage of the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill 2025 on August 20, that commercial engine has ground to a halt, with budgets frozen and upcoming campaigns shelved indefinitely.

The numbers game: A ₹8,000 crore wipeout

Production houses are among the first few to feel the tremors. According to Sandeep Goyal, Managing Director at Rediffusion Brand Solutions, the ban could leave them poorer by ₹200–300 crore, with projects scrapped mid-way and big-budget shoots cancelled overnight. Celebrity managers, ad film directors, stylists, and entire crews that had locked in schedules for the festive season now find themselves in limbo.

Zooming out, Goyal warns the crisis could wipe out ₹7,000–8,000 crore in annual ad spends across the ecosystem. “BCCI and IPL teams (jersey sponsorships mainly) could lose about ₹1,000 crore or more from selling commercial time. Performance marketing could see a ₹5,000+ crore erosion, it has been a big category for them. Celebrities could lose ₹300–400 crore annually. The ad agency business could lose ₹300–400 crore in fees and retainers,” he said.

Industry executives estimate that a single big-ticket RMG ad film factoring in creative agency fees, production costs, and celebrity endorsements could cost anywhere between Rs 6 and Rs 10 crore.

Creative ideation and strategy alone run into ₹50 lakh–1.5 crore, while high-quality productions with top directors can add ₹2–5 crore. Celebrity appearances further push budgets higher, with Bollywood A-listers and marquee cricketers commanding ₹2–5 crore per campaign. And this doesn’t include media spends, which during IPL often touched ₹50–100 crore per season, making RMG one of the most aggressive advertisers in the country. 

With the ban, that entire pipeline of big-money campaigns from agency pitch decks to celebrity shoots to prime-time rollouts has vanished overnight.

The advertising empire that RMG built

The RMG industry's biggest player, Dream11, alone worked with a sprawling web of creative and media partners. Leo Burnett Orchard developed creative campaigns, Tilt Brand Solutions and ZeroFifty Mediaworks produced the campaign's ad films, Happy McGarryBowen curated the brand design, Wavemaker handled the media, while Blink Digital steered the campaigns digitally. These outfits, ranging from big to small, had entire units churning out cricket season bursts with the IPL, broadcasting always-on performance ads, and, more importantly, celebrity tie-ups.

Another big player was MPL (Mobile Premier League), bringing in Lowe Lintas for their creative side and Performics (a performance marketing engine of Publicis Groupe) for digital. The latest IPL season's MVP, My11Circle, has been collaborating with DViO Digital for its digital-first campaigns since 2022. With The Script Room producing the ads, My11Circle achieved unimaginable success by collaborating with cricketers instead of actors for the promotions, hitting the right chords in the hearts of the die-hard fans.

From legends like Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman to rising stars like Shubman Gill, Mohammed Siraj, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Arshdeep Singh, My11Circle spent a king's ransom on advertising alone. Not only Indian cricketers, but beloved international players like Travis Head, Phil Salt, and Marco Jansen were also secured by the brand for the campaigns. My11Circle is handled by parent Games24x7, which also owns RummyCircle, another RMG platform that dealt primarily with card games.

A domino effect of losses across the ecosystem

The ban on the operations of the RMG platforms undeniably affects the brands themselves, but the advertising portion is also affected by the law. The Bill states that "No person shall offer, promote, or engage in online money gaming services. Similarly, no person shall create, cause, or be involved in any advertisement in any media, including electronic communication, that directly or indirectly encourages participation in online money games or promotes online money gaming." 

This alone affects a lot of sectors other than the platforms themselves. Investors, employees of the platforms, vendors, the ad agencies promoting the platforms, creative houses that dealt with the production of the ads, celebrity endorsers, the teams in IPL, broadcasters of the Premier League, and finally, the users, or players, who actively participated in the RMGs.

Sanjay Trehan, Digital and New Media Advisor, acknowledges the immediate challenge, saying, "There is no denying that this will cause a serious disruption in the short term in the gaming sector, as they stand to lose over 80% of their revenue. But we have to understand that money flows where the customers are. RMG will have to pivot to NMG (No Money Gaming) and social media gaming and build cohorts of engaged communities."

From Dream11 to Nightmare

Big-ticket production houses like the Nitesh Tiwari-founded Earthsky Pictures (behind Dream11's latest Aamir Khan and Ranbir Kapoor campaigns) are among the most visibly hit. 

They had locked in high-profile directors, celebrity schedules, sets, and crew some costs that have already sunk by now. Casting directors, too, are left in limbo, with contracts signed for cricketers and Bollywood actors that may never make it to the screen. For talent managers, who negotiated multi-crore endorsement deals with cricket legends like Sourav Ganguly, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, or even international influencers like Khaby Lame, this is a double blow: fees unpaid, reputations risked.

Influencer agencies like White Rivers Media and smaller sports-focused creator networks are suddenly without their biggest category client. These firms had built rosters of cricket YouTubers, Instagram creators, and meme pages around Dream11's “Dimaag Laga Na”-style campaigns. With RMG spending gone, these micro-influencers face a drought of brand tie-ups.

Creative boldness won't die with RMG

However, Sudhir Das, Senior Executive Creative Director at Cheil India, believes the creative soul of advertising will survive this disruption, saying, “RMG brands allowed people to think in terms of scale - the kind that massive budgets deliver. While one cannot underestimate the importance of that in the current age of shrinking budgets and ROI measurements, we have also seen waves of categories with disproportionate budgets multiple times - from e-commerce to ride aggregators to quick commerce.”

“There will be another wave soon, with another category that needs a similar level of investment. In addition, there are many kinds of creative expressions that do not depend so much on budgets. A great song, a clever joke, a weird dance, a smart one-liner - all of these can be done reasonably well for less,” Das added.

The ripple effect extends into editing bays, sound studios, and animation units. The seasonal 'hustle months' around IPL were when entire boutique post-production shops survived on RMG work; churning out 15-second cut-downs, multilingual dubs, and festive collaterals. Many now sit idle, with vendors reporting sudden cancellations and payment freezes.

Russhabh R. Thakkar, Founder and CEO at Frodoh, quantifies the broader impact, saying, "Digital advertising spends by real-money gaming companies across sports and other categories were estimated at ₹3,000 - 4,500 crore annually. Including the broader advertising ecosystem, such as TV, print, and outdoor media, the potential impact could reach ₹7,000 crore, signaling a possible sector-wide slowdown."

Behind the numbers lies a stark reality: dozens of copywriters, art directors, production crews, stylists, editors, and junior account managers were essentially staffed on RMG accounts. For smaller agencies, where 60 - 70% of billing came from gaming, the ban isn't a dip; it's a total existential threat.

Pivoting to brand safety and social responsibility

Trehan emphasizes the long-term opportunity in this crisis, saying, “The biggest risk for brands in this situation is their inability or lack of agility to deal with disruption at this scale. It is truly a game-changing (pardon the pun) moment. While it is a significant audience loss for the brands in the short term, I see it as an opportunity for the brands to think out of the box, engage with their communities, and provide them with a safer and meaningful way to play. Social media gaming, which thrives on community participation, could be one of the ways to do so.”He adds that the ban will force brands to evaluate partnerships more carefully, saying, “Yes, partnerships need to be evaluated with a brand-safe prism. Is the platform in sync with brand values and personality? Does it add to the brand promise? Is it built on ethical values? Does it have a moral framework? What's the larger social context? These are some of the questions that need to be asked by brand custodians. A mercenary approach is generally counterproductive in the long term.”

E-sports: The new hope or false dawn?

With esports still in the clear, the sector is expected to rise as the focus is shifted to them in the overall gaming industry. Kushal Bhuva, Associate Vice President for Influencer Marketing and Video at White Rivers Media, says, "The RMG category has been a major driver of digital advertising, but this transition reflects a realignment rather than a downturn. While RMG attracted nearly 450 million users, largely from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, the wider gaming community in India now exceeds 560 million and is diversifying rapidly into casual, social, and e-sports."

Bhuva adds, "This growth, powered by localised content and emerging technologies, offers advertisers new ways to reach highly engaged audiences. The shift is from raw impression counts to quality engagement, where authenticity and session length matter more than volume. Advertising strategies are evolving accordingly, with brands targeting defined sub-segments and relying on data-driven insights and influencer collaborations to build deeper connections. The immediate impact of the ban is clear, but the long-term outlook is positive. India's gaming ecosystem remains resilient, innovative, and well-positioned for sustainable growth beyond RMG's dominance."

For now, creative agencies that thrived on RMG’s deep pockets are scrambling to plug the gap a stark reminder that no client category, however lucrative, can remain the industry’s lifeline forever.”