Advertisers can get pretty sneaky. Since 1995 we know that the government came down hard on the direct advertising of liquor. But did liquor manufacturers just roll over & take the hit and call it a bad day? Do you recall how Kingfisher used to prominently feature as "Packaged Drinking Water" on our screens ?
Same logo, same vibe, same "King of Good Times" feel to it. Even though the label on screen said "Soda" or "Packaged Drinking Water, " that bird soaring in on a red backdrop told your brain what was really waiting in the cold storage.
Now betting companies have picked up on this trick but they've updated the play-book, swapping the water bottle for a "news portal"
Take Dafabet for example. They can't legally run a TV ad in India saying "Come bet with us", so they came up with DafaNews. Same logo, same font, and same busy red & yellow branding. It's not a news site in the way you'd traditionally think of one, it's more of a digital front for them. They've put a fortune into getting that "News" logo into every cricket match broadcast.
They even outsmarted the old soda companies. They just outright bought the icons.
When you see a sports legend like Alan Shearer or a top cricketer showing off a DafaNews shirt, they're not there to report on the scores. They're being used by a gambling brand to give it a 'clean face.' If a world-class athlete pops up on a website called DafaNews talking about "expert analysis" you're more likely to think it's a credible source because it's a well known name. And that’s the genius of it, because of two clever things.
First, the law is pretty blind to this one. Technically these sites are advertising "news" - and news is okay, technically.
Then the athlete is the second hook. You might ignore some random pop up ad but you won't ignore your favourite captain giving you a "tip" by pretending it's an insight. By the time you've seen the logo 50 times during a game, you start to think of the "news" site as just another betting portal.
The idea behind the whole DafaNews setup is to get you to click on an "exclusive offer" - then the rug gets pulled out from under you and you find yourself looking at the dafabet sports login screen before you even know what hit you.
Other betting companies are catching up fast - and some of them aren't even trying to be subtle.
Take Parimatch. Instead of just a news site, they launched their own "Parimatch Sports" sportswear line - with high end gear that top cricketers and ISL players get to show off on TV in slick commercials. But try buying one of those "premium" t-shirts in a shop or on the internet, it's nowhere to be found. It's a ghost brand, existing purely so the logo can be plastered all over your TV during prime time. The same branding that leads you straight to a betting site if you search it up.
Then there's 1xBet, which has mastered the art of the dummy company. They've launched loads of fake sites like 1xBat and 1xNews. During matches, the boards around the pitch scream "1xBat" in the same font as the betting site. Your eyes just see a cricket bat company, but deep down you're just seeing the betting site where you can put 500 bucks on the next game.