Blacklisted Betting Sites in India
Generally, we talk about betting sites that we recommend. We point you towards great bonuses and promotions on various betting sites and tell you where to find good odds. We want you to have a pleasant betting experience, after all. And if you consider our advice good, you’ll come back again, which is good for us - and you.
Therefore, we consider it our duty to also warn you of rogue betting sites that are only out to scam you out of your money. Here you will learn everything you need to know about blacklisted betting sites and why we want to warn you about sites like dream11.bet, dreamexch and probet9.
What does ‘blacklisted’ mean?
Is there are actual list of betting sites and online casinos that are considered rogue, untrustworthy or a scam? There are several lists, actually, which differ depending on who put the list together. The betting sites we introduce here are all ‘whitelisted’. In the simplest terms, white signifies trustworthy and safe, whereas black refers to untrustworthy and unsafe.
Whitelisted betting sites, for instance, hold valid gambling licenses from jurisdictions such as Malta, the UK, Sweden or Curacao. Such betting sites have often been reviewed by many sites similar to ours and have been proven to be fair in many ways.
Blacklisted betting sites often don’t have valid gambling licenses and player complaints and thorough reviews have revealed business practices and a general conduct that have resulted in some sort of ban. Such betting sites are not recommended for play.
Criteria for blacklisting a betting site
The question, of course, is which criteria are applied to determine whether a betting site should be blacklisted. What constitutes as rogue behaviour or a scam?
There are quite a few aspects we and other investigate before applying the label of ‘blacklisted’.
Let’s give you a quick summary:
- Licensing issues or lack of valid gambling licenses
- Unfair or unreasonable bonus terms
- Lack of payment or ridiculous withdrawal delays
- Bad odds and lack of randomness in their games
- Poor customer service and unethical conduct
We want to look closer at what each of these aspects could entail and what you should look out for specifically.
Licensing issues
All betting and gambling sites are required to be licensed if they want to operate legally. That is true in countries where online betting and gambling is regulated through various gambling laws. If online betting is outlawed, no license will make it legal in that country. That doesn’t mean, however, that a casino or betting site automatically becomes rogue.
Valid gambling licenses are issued by the UK Gambling Commission, the Malta Gaming Authority, through the Swedish Gambling Authority and through Curacao. Other countries or states that have official gambling licenses are Denmark, Romania, Italy, the state of Sikkim, New Jersey, Nevada, Delaware and Pennsylvania, Australia and New Zealand. This list is not comprehensive, of course, but these are common licenses a casino may hold.
Trustworthy online casino and betting sites will not only display their licenses openly, they will also give in-depth information about the licenses they hold. You will also be able to confirm with the gambling jurisdiction that the license is valid. The UKGC, for instance, lists previous warning, penalties or sanctions against and online gambling site. That enables customer to determine whether they want to trust a betting site or not. The lack of sanctions or existing former penalties doesn’t automatically make a gambling site a good or a bad option, though. It’s only one point to consider.
If no license is displayed on a betting site and you can’t find any information at all whether a betting site is officially regulated through any jurisdiction, you should definitely stay away. They can have the best business practices and fair conduct in the world, if you even do have difficulties with them, you have nowhere to turn to for help.
Unfair bonus terms
Almost all betting sites offer bonuses and promotions. Those always come with conditions attached. Some betting sites that have been around forever can usually afford to have very fair bonus conditions that make it achievable to meet the bonus requirements and eventually withdraw the bonus and winnings from it. Newer betting sites tend to have stricter terms, usually to prevent bonus hunters from taking disadvantage of the bonuses and disappearing again. But there is strict and then there is unreasonable. A betting site that wants you to roll over your bonus and deposit 40x within 7 days is being unreasonable. Or, if we’re look at a sports bonus, you need to wager your bonus and deposit 10x on odds of 2.0 or higher in a short amount of time. In such cases, the betting site or casino seems to count on you not meeting the bonus terms so that they don’t have to pay it out. That in itself is not necessarily a reason to blacklist a casino, but it means you should proceed with caution and only claim a portion of the bonus. Or not claim it at all.
We can consider a betting site a scam if they retroactively change the bonus terms, however. This has happened with rogue betting sites before. It usually happens when a do meet the bonus requirements and want to withdraw the bonus and your winnings. A rogue casino will then change their terms (not even by much) to make it looks as if you have violated the terms and refuse to pay out. They may even close your account and kick you out. You’re better off to stay away anyway.
Lack of payment or overly complicated withdrawal methods
At some point, every betting site wants to confirm your ID, which includes your actual ID, proof of address and perhaps even proof of withdrawal method. This is part of the KYC (Know Your Customer) process and in keeping with anti-money laundering regulations.
A betting site that keeps rejecting your documents, making it virtually impossible for you to prove who you are, should be viewed with suspicion. Yes, on the surface they may make you jump through hoops for your own protection and not all documents are accepted. But a trustworthy betting site will clearly state what they need and give you good reasons why a document may have been rejected.
If you are able to make a withdrawal but the money never arrives or takes forever to do so, you should also be wary. There are plenty of valid reasons why a payment is delayed. Large withdrawals will always be double checked, for instance. Perhaps the bank takes a long time to process the withdrawal or there is a valid hold-up somewhere else.
But if you have to wait more than five business days, you should make enquiries and you should not just receive bland apologies and hollow promises that things will be done soon.
It is also problematic when a betting site only allows one or two withdrawal methods that are totally inconvenient to you. Most betting sites want you to use the same method for deposits and withdrawals. The alternative will usually be an old-fashioned back transfer.
Cancelling your withdrawals or voiding your winnings are definitely a bad sign and should give you reason to avoid a betting site. Especially if the explanations are flimsy at best.
Limiting players
Another issue common with rogue betting sites is the practice to limit players. Once you have placed some successful bets, especially if larger amounts of money were in play, a rogue betting site might limit your bet size, making it difficult for you place bigger bets and thus win big.
Overly successful players could even have their accounts closed or wins voided. In such cases, the rogue betting site will likely accuse you of fraud and you have no way of preventing that.
Bad odds and lack of randomness
If a betting site offers consistently worse odds than their competitors, something is definitely off. Whilst there is a margin to consider on which a betting site makes profit, the odds should not be too far away from that of other betting sites. Be sure to compare and don’t bet on odds that seem unfair.
Most betting sites offer other forms of gambling as well. Rogue gambling sites will manipulate those games to see you losing much more than you will ever be able to win. As such, randomness is not guaranteed.
Of course, losing streaks are entirely possible and not uncommon. Just as winning streaks are possible. But nobody usually loses all the time. One solution is to walk away and stop playing. But if a majority of players keep complaining about long losing streaks, something is fishy.
Bad customer service and lack of responsiveness
A good betting site will also have good customer service. A dedicated and professional team will be available 24/7, can be easily reached and doesn’t take long to respond. They will always try to help you with your issue.
Rogue casinos generally offer only poor customer service. They will be difficult to reach, prove unresponsive, outright ignore you and perhaps even just spam you with offers or bonuses to get you to play.
You will have difficulties to set limits or self-exclude and they may disregard any limits you have set and let you deposit more than you should. They will not address potentially problematic gambling behaviour with you and are quite obviously only interested in you depositing and playing further.
All this qualifies as poor customer service and unethical behaviour. Betting sites guilty of such conduct are sure to get blacklisted.
How does a betting site get blacklisted?
There is no official all-encompassing blacklist where every rogue betting site or online casino is listed. Some betting sites are blacklisted by general consensus on virtually all platforms dealing with betting sites and online casinos and regularly providing assistance and gambling advice.
Other betting sites may only be blacklisted by one reviewer due to reasons they will usually explain (such as lack of cooperation in resolving complaints). Other reviewers may still have good dealing with that betting site and have no reason to blacklist it.
Whenever a gambling forum or betting site reviewers deem it necessary to blacklist a betting site, they will have good reasons. The first to point out problems are usually the players. If a large number of players has the same complaints and it becomes impossible to recommend a betting site with good conscience, further reviews will usually be conducted to be certain that we are looking at a rogue betting site.
Many online casinos or betting sites may be guilty to some degree of one of the issues listed above. We know of betting sites where players have complained of having been limited, for instance. Or bonus terms that seemed unreasonable to us.
But no betting site gets blacklisted because we don’t like one aspect of their bonus terms or player interaction. Usually, several issues are present at once. And only when we have verified a number of issues that prevent of us from recommending a betting site, would we consider it blacklisted.
Can blacklisted betting sites improve?
Yes, things can get better. We have seen several instances of betting sites earning unfavourable reputations among players but improving over the years. Often, a change of ownership was behind such improvements.
However, truly rogue casinos that are only popping up to scam you out of your money, are not interested in improving. They will vanish as quickly as they appeared and leave you the poorer for it.
What to do when you suspect that a betting site is a scam? The first thing to do is to withdraw all your remaining funds and stop using that site. You should try to cut all ties with them as well. That way they will hopefully not spam your email account either.
More importantly, however, is it to warn others. You can leave your own reviews in various forums. And if you have encountered issues with withdrawals and have not received your winnings, you should see whether you can get help from third parties such as AskGamblers, where they can contact a betting site on your behalf.
If the betting site does hold a valid license, you can always contact the licensing body and ask them to investigate as well. The more complaints accumulate, the higher the chance that a license is revoked and that the betting site is officially penalised. That could even result in you getting your money back.
Blacklisted betting sites in India
The main question for you is, which betting sites are actually blacklisted in India. As it is, there are a lot of blacklisted online betting sites in India. Whilst online gambling is not strictly speaking legal in India, there are plenty of whitelisted betting sites that you can safely use. Most of the best ones we have reviewed for you.
Just because we have not reviewed a site you may favour, doesn’t mean it is unsafe, of course. That’s why we want to be specific about the sites we consider rogue and therefore unsafe for you to bet at.
Dream11.bet
Not to be confused with the immensely popular fantasy site Dream11.
And that is exactly what they are trying to do: confuse their visitors with their branding, where people think that this is a reputable brand.
We have unfortunately received a lot of complaints from people who have tried betting at this website, and many have lost their money as they are easily cheating their users it seems.
Our recommendation would be to stay away from Dream11.bet.
Dreamexch
Not to be mistaken for Dreamexchange, which is different. At this point, our research into this betting site is ongoing, but we will update you as we learn more. Currently, there are some warning signs that we cannot ignore:
- There is virtually no information about the site or who owns it
- You can only look at the site and learn more about after you created an account
Sometimes, you have to go with your gut feeling. And in this instance, we don’t have a good feeling. We have reviewed tons of betting sites in recent years and have never come across something like that.
Probet9
Again, there is very little we know about this site. It’s another betting site catering to Indian customers and we are also researching them at this time to learn more about them.
- No licensing or operator information available
- Here too, you need to create an account to access the site
If you want to visit a betting site and see what they are like, it should give you pause if all you get is a login screen. What do they have to hide? Transparency is a major factor we review when checking out betting sites. Fair, open and trustworthy betting sites will be easily accessible and provide loads of information before you sign up. This is not the case here, so proceed with utmost caution.
We recommend you check out our reviewed betting sites and use them for your online betting in India.