Supreme Court Halts PIL Against Opinion Trading Platforms in Major Relief to Gaming Sector

In a major victory for India’s fast-growing gaming sector, the Supreme Court of India has stayed all proceedings in Public Interest Litigations (PILs) against opinion trading platforms in the High Courts of Chhattisgarh and Gujarat. This is seen as a welcome relief to opinion trading platforms Probo, SportsBaazi, and MPL Opinio which are leading the charge for this emerging format in the country.

The order, made on May 22, comes right in time when the debate intensifies over whether opinion trading is, in fact, a "game of skill" under Indian law. This, the gaming industry sees as a crucial distinction that provides protections against gambling legislation for gaming platforms.

Why is this legal battle being fought against Opinion Trading?

 

The development is in response to a plea made by Probo, which approached the apex court seeking to transfer pending PILs to High Courts: Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh, to the Bombay High Court. The main reason behind it: is to prevent conflicting legal judgments and promote judicial efficiency in dealing with similar legal issues.

Opinion trading platforms enable users to predict events in the real world, often sporting and betting, or trading in financial markets (for potential rewards). Opinion Trading is not a fantasy sport where you make a fake team of actual players and score points based on the actual performance of the real players, but rather where users are predicting real-time with rewards. 

At the heart of the legal dilemma is whether these formats can be said to be “games of skill”, a legitimate and protected class under Indian gaming laws, or if they are treated as games of chance which, in some states, could bring them under the ambit of gambling laws.

A Sector's Rise

 

In the last few years, there has been growing user interest in real-time engagement in India and companies such as Probo, and SportsBaazi are taking advantage of this new trend by using sports and live or factual events with a gamified elements like predictive factors to create new formats of user engagement.

With lakhs of daily active users and increasing interest from investors, these platform use cases are next to emerge in the growing gaming and digital entertainment economy in India.

How Other Countries Regulate Opinion Trading

As India charts its legal path regarding opinion trading, other countries have been ahead of the game with varying types of frameworks from highly regulated markets to complete prohibitions. Here’s a breakdown of how various countries deal with this sector:

 

Country	Platform Type	Key Example	Legal Status
USA	Academic Prediction Market	Iowa Electronic Markets	Legal, educational use only
UK	Betting Exchange	Betfair	Legal with license
New Zealand	Crowdsourced Forecasting	Future Crunch	Legal (non-profit)
India	Opinion Trading	Probo, MPL Opinio	Under scrutiny, legality debated
Singapore	Restricted Gambling	—	Illegal unless licensed
UAE/Saudi Arabia	Banned Entirely	—	Strictly illegal

 

The intervention from the Supreme Court is likely to create legal equivalence on a country-wide basis for treating opinion trading or engagement-based platforms in law. For the advocates, this creates a respite but also suggests a major legal interpretation is looming. 

While India continues to ascertain how to regulate its expanding digital gaming industry, the ruling, in this case, could determine a future not just for opinion trading but for a broader classification of prediction-focused, skill-based platforms that are at the intersection of technology, entertainment, and finance.