Maharaja T20 Trophy, a local state T20 tournament in Karnataka, began on August 13. What’s interesting is that surrogate brands for betting sites were again seen sponsoring a tournament. This time, Dafanews and Parimatch Sports were spotted sponsoring the domestic T20 tournament.

During the first match on Sunday, August 13, between Gulbarga Mystics (GM) and Kalyani Bengaluru Blasters (KBB), banners of Dafanews and Parimatch Sports were spotted all across the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore.

Dafanews is the surrogate brand for dafabet, while Parimatch Sports is recently launched sports clothing surrogate brand for parimatch. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) banned these sites among many others for operating illegally in India.

These websites now use multiple mirror domains to operate in India, as MeitY blocked their official websites. They also use the surrogate brands and celebrities to promote and eventually redirect users to their betting websites.

The organizer’s official announcement indicates that both surrogate brands are associate sponsors of the tournament.

Illegal betting brands continue to sponsor through surrogate brands

Local sports events like these often feature suchlike brands as sponsors. Despite several advisories from Ministry of Information and Broadcast (MIB), surrogate brands shamelessly sponsor such tournaments.

Parimatch most recently hosted an event celebrating their surrogate sports clothing brand. Notably, it also invited its brand ambassador Indian cricketer Shivam Dube to attend the launch event. The company claims to be a completely legal website, while it is actually banned.

On the other hand, authorities had started a probe against Dafabet for online betting allegation. Eventually, MeitY banned the site from operating. However, it still comes up time and again with its surrogate brands as sponsors in events.